Personal Pan God

It's Monday and I'm supposed to have said something insightful by now. Here's my deep thought for the day - I find it a little ironic that as my son is advancing in potty training, I find myself regressing.  Thirty-two weeks pregnant and carrying a low-rider, anyone?

But in all seriousness, let me see if there's anything... Ah, yes. God's personal will for our lives. I think often we order up God's will like we would a personal pan pizza, thinking that while the extra large one on the table suits the rest of the family just fine, we need our own slice - hold the olives and put a little extra cheese on there. And we have the audacity to sit at the table while everyone is smacking their chompers and partaking in lively conversation and complain of being hungry as we wait to be served.

Over the past couple years, I've questioned my need to feel like God has extra special plans for my life, to feel like I've got some higher calling than that which has been laid out in front of me. From third grade until shortly after Joe and I got married, I knew I was going to be a missionary overseas. I was awkward enough, passionate enough, and serious enough to just barely not fit in here amongst believers in my own home. I took short term trips which fired me up and reinforced this perceived calling, but in between these trips I felt a lack of life and challenge.

It didn't really occur to me until the second trip to Romania that I might be partially motivated by pride and a quest to impress God or others - not sure which. About six months into marriage, I finally relinquished my "right" to missions understanding that perhaps God had called me to stay and serve where I was. I can't tell you how angry I was up until this point. I didn't know how to follow Jesus without doing something that involved a major physical change in my surroundings. I'd never pictured my life as a normal American, in a normal house, driving an SUV and dropping my kid off at Mom's Morning Out once a week, but that's where I am.

This Sunday, I reflected on how the instant I start wondering what more God has in store for me (surely I'm cut out for more than just doing the laundry and trying to get a toddler to eat his yogurt), I begin to lose gratitude for this life, and fail to see the gravity of my daily service to my family. I become introspective and selfish and don't serve well. My child gets whiny, my husband feels neglected, and I get bitter.

Do I think God can have a personal will for our lives? Most certainly! I look at my sister who nannies during the fall and spring semesters and travels to Nicaragua during the summers to work with orphans. She has a very unique calling on her life. However, she doesn't force it. She knows just as seamlessly as God brought her these opportunities, He could remove them from her. When she's not traveling, she digs in hard with her local church serving in what capacity she is able. I also look at various Israelites and disciples in scripture whom God called to accomplish huge things in distant lands. It seems that their callings were blatant, undeniable, and nearly unavoidable. As Tyler emphasized in church on Sunday, God's heart is for all people to know him and therefore, there must be those that He sends out.

God's universal calling to followers to build the local church, make Jesus's name known, and to worship Him is no small or lesser calling and is certainly nothing to be ashamed of. As I saw that God had closed doors for me to serve in other countries, I was embarrassed. I'd talked up my heart for missions. I'd expressed to my Romanian friends my desire to return. I'd found my identity in international ministry. I didn't feel needed here. Here felt like a cop-out. What finally occurred to me was that if my heart could not be glad in serving God here, then perhaps Jesus was not at the center of my calling to go somewhere else. Maybe I was. I now see that my having a heart for all people or even a specific people group is not mutually exclusive of my serving in my own town amongst my own people.

My pride still rears its ugly head in the form of wanting to jump into major service projects or taking leadership of ministries when it is clearly not my time. There are eight weeks until this new baby boy "heads out". I need to be in serious prayer for my family. I need to be thanking my husband for his hard work and for how he shows us affection and care during his time off work. I need to be humbling myself to the lofty calling God has placed right before me. I cannot predict the next forty years of my life, and do not know whether or not God will one day send our family somewhere, but meanwhile I need to be the hand or the earlobe or whatever part of the body He has told me to be.