Return

We went back home this past week. We spent a few days in our hometown and then I spent a few days with my parents and sister. Going back home is always a "blogging" expirience somehow or another. I grew up in East Texas. I had a close group of friends and was close to my family and seemed to always know exactly who I was and exactly where I was going. I remember the summer after fifth grade, I was praying one night in my bed and I felt the Lord ask me very clearly, "You need to decide right here, right now how you are going to live your next several years - are you going to let me lead you or are you not?" And I did decide - I told the Lord I was going to let Him lead me, that I wasn't going to do things my way - that I wanted to follow his path for my life. I look back on that night as one of the most incredible moments of my life. I believe God drew me to himself on that night. That he put a hedge of protection around me, that he gave me a desire for the things of God, and a discerning spirit above the norm for an eleven year old girl. I also went to Mexico that summer and met a missionary's wife that still today I think about when wrestling with who I am..... which brings me to my point. I feel like I am at a loss to who I am anymore. As a teen, I was so confident in who I was. I had a small group of wonderful friends, a calling from the Lord in my heart and passion and excitement for what was ahead in my life. Today I still have some amazing friends and an absolutely fabulous husband and kids. I love my role as a stay at home, homeschool mom and wife. But...... here I am 27 years old and I feel like I don't know who I really am anymore (apart from mom and wife). When God brought us to the church we're at now, he clearly told us that this would be a place he would build our character - sounds good, right? However, sometimes its painful. As a teenager, God surrounded me with loving, mentoring people that allowed me to use the gifts God has given me. They prayed for me, encouraged me, taught me, and praised me. Now I am at a place that really doesn't care what I did when I was seventeen and if I want to do anything ministry- wise, I have to work for it. Go to classes, meet with "important" people, prove myself responsible and spiritual. All good things, but all very hard for my pride. After trying a few things in the church that either ended in near disaster or just ended naturally I have surrendered. I say it is because I don't want to put my children in the nursery for hours a week while I go through all the steps to "becoming a leader" - I mean isn't that why I did all the trainings and ministry as a teenager and went to Bible college so that I could actually minister when I was an adult - do I really have to start over and prove myself to a new group of people..... as I go on in my mind and now in this blog, my motives of just wanting to be the best mom start looking like just a big old huge pride issue. Its not just the ministry part though, its the social part too. For the first time in my life, I am stressed about how much I weigh, I feel insecure sitting by myself at church, I am sure people are purposely refusing to look at me when they pass by, I can actually remember what people wore the next day! I have NEVER been like that. Yesterday morning at my mom's I got ready for the day, took a last look in the mirror and started to leave when I remembered, "Oh, I have to go by the church on my way home today!" I looked at myself in the mirror again and thought, "What was I thinking? I look frightful!" All of sudden I thought of that missionary wife - the one that I wanted to model my life after and I realized how far I've gone from who I really am on the deep inside. The "me" God made me to be. I made myself NOT plug in my CHI, not put on more make up and instead walk out of that bathroom and determine to begin to find that girl again. The girl who wanted to know God more than what was going to happen on CSI that night, the girl that would rather be singing Jesus songs with children of all colors in a old run down trailer park than shopping or relaxing, the girl that was willing to give up anything and everything to know that I was exactly where God wanted me to be. I feel lost because I am. I don't like where I am right now. I don't want to raise my children as this new self-absorbed person I've become. I want to be Mrs Shirley Ladd who in 100 degree heat in Mexico shone with such beauty because of her deep love for God and the people that God had called her to serve. Her beauty came from a surrendered heart that was satisfied not in her outward self and certainly not in her easy circumstances but in the peace and overflowing joy that came from being in that perfect place of God's will. There is a God's will in the physical - and ours is Gateway for now and there is a God's will in the heart and I have wandered far, I fear..... but God is calling me back. I hear him singing a love song right where I left Him and I yearn to return to Him, to my first love. Nothing satisfies my heart but HIm.