“If we know who God has made us to be, we can stop trying to be someone we are not and let go of the stress that comes with living that kind of life. When we are walking the path God has called us to walk, we will discover grace beyond our expectations to succeed.” Thus wrote Mike Breen and Steve Cockram in their wonderfully practical and highly recommended book, Building a Discipling Culture.
In the process of reading this book for the work of making disciples (who make disciples), I was forced to think through who I really am. Introverted or extroverted? A pioneer or a settler? An apostle or shepherd (or prophet, teacher or evangelist)? What is God’s base role for me and what are just phases that I have gone through in order to understand the other roles? Big questions, hard answers.
At heart I am a passionate, introverted apostle with a strong evangelist bent who processes thoughts out loud (or in stream of consciousness writing) but gets rejuvenated by solitude or being with a small core of trusted friends and loved ones. Go figure. I’m a contradiction. Nothing really new there.
What stands out about this whole introspective “who am I” process is the realization that I have never been more myself while feeling less like the person I had been for years. I am at home, or at least heading in the right direction, with all that God would have me be. I know who I am and I’m loving and accepting this imperfect, growing person. I’m even learning to share this flawed and utterly human being with others. So what about the years between 22 and 38? What about that other person who was me and yet was so different to who I am now? How do I account for being two very different people?
It would be impossible to unpack all the whys and hows of me, as it is for any of us, but what it comes down to is embracing the vision and call of God while simultaneously surrendering my vision and my call.
I mentioned in “Surrender” how my mother and neighbor were always looking for “something more.” I totally get that! I did it too. My whole life there has been a sense of “something more.” What distinguished my “more” is that I’ve found it! When I was 14 I felt called to be a missionary. No idea how or where that came from, but that was what prompted me to go to Bible college rather than medical school. I was called to be a missionary. This I knew.
Yet I got distracted. I did good things along the way, made some lifelong friends, served God. Yet it became a matter of doing the next thing, doing what was expected. It was about pushing for my dreams, my goals. It was about losing everything of real meaning and value. It was about hiding away from a barrage of slander and misrepresentation. It was about finding renewed passions and exploring new abilities. It was about rediscovering the image I once had of myself as a girl missionary somewhere overseas with a long blond braid and a child of dark complexion on my hip.
I can still see that image. That girl exists now only in a plumper body with shorter, graying hair, living in a trailer park with mostly older adults. Yet she exists – older, wiser, more joyful. She is a missionary.
Those intervening years were not lost. They were a part of the journey toward that person, that missionary. It was a long, hard, painful, at times ugly and eminently worthwhile journey. Before I could be the missionary God wanted me to be, I had to release my pride, my ambition, my image. Once I did that, God was able to replace it with his pride in me as his daughter, his ambition for me as his ambassador and his image reflected through me.
I am a missionary, serving people the world has forgotten but whom God has not.
Just as he has not forget me.
