This means that we missionaries are getting asked a lot of questions: What does it take to be a missionary? What is a dating fast? Is fundraising hard? What do you do all day? What is your favorite part of your job? Why did you become a missionary?
And I LOVE it! I love answering these questions and talking about what I do and the things I get to witness God doing in the lives around me. This is the most fun, rewarding, formative and scariest thing I've ever done!
Becoming Team Director this year has been a whole new adventure on top of that. This summer God tried to prepare me by telling me, "You've got what it takes, but it's going to take everything you've got." And He didn't lie. It's definitely been the hardest, most humbling and grace-filled time of my life. I have a sticky note on the mirror in my bedroom that gives me a peptalk every morning before I start my day. It says: "You do enough. You have enough. You are enough." There have been many mornings I've needed that reassurance from Jesus. There have been days where I've felt like giving up and walking away, but Jesus has turned to me and asked, "Quo Vadis?" There have also been days where I've experienced so much and been so amazed at the goodness of God that I can't imagine doing anything else with my life.
And this is why the last question our students have is the hardest to answer: Are you going to do it again next year?
I don't know.
Everyday I feel differently. Some days I want to, some days I don't. But I realize it's not really about what I want. It's about what God is calling me to. There are so many different options... I could be a missionary. I could stay here or I could go somewhere else. I could become a NaPro Practicioner. I could get my Masters in Theology at the Augustine Institute. I could move home. I could do foreign mission work - use my ChE degree and do water purification in third world countries. I could make beer. I could work in a bakery and teach aerobics classes after work. The list goes on...
I took this all to prayer today and the image that came to me was that I was a little girl in a dress that had somehow gotten lost in the woods. I was standing in the middle of a large clearing suddenly realizing that I had no idea how to get home. I was so overwhelmed and a little scared and told God I needed Him to send me a butterfly. I needed something to look at, to chase, to distract me from looking at all of the directions I could go, and instead lead me by staying close to and chasing Him.
He did not appear. No butterflies. He did, however, tell me (once again) to close my eyes. That seems to be our theme this year. He wants me to stop looking around at everything I think I want and everything I think He might be doing and showing me - and instead just close my eyes and trust Him. He then told me to rest. This has been a new, yet frequent, command to me. Rest. So I did. I closed my eyes and lay down in the clearing right where I was. I felt the grass holding me, the wind playing with my hair, the sun touching my cheek and smiling down at me... and I opened my eyes, and there it was: a dandelion.
A number of years ago I came to a retreat here in the Rockies. On this retreat Dr. Tim Gray taught me something that would come to redefine my spirituality: dandelion theology.
As children grow up, they like to give their parents gifts: pictures they color, crafts they make, bouquets of flowers from the garden. And parents RECEIVE them. Mothers are especially good at this - not only receiving them, but receiving them with delight, seeing the beauty in the gift even if she can't tell what the colored drawing is a picture of. Think of a child picking dandelions out of the lawn and bringing a handful of them to mom... She sees them and is delighted and grateful. She says things like, "Thank you! They're beautiful!" and puts them in a glass of water in the middle of the table to show them off.
Dr. Gray said that often times we feel like a child offering our best to God and Him receiving it well and loving us anyway. But he invited us to put ourselves in the role of mom. How do we respond to the bouquets of half decapitated weeds covered in gnats that Jesus brings us? How do we receive the things in our life that are God's will for us? Do we receive them with delight and gratitude even when it's hard to find the beauty in the gift? even when it's hard to understand what the picture of scribbles could possibly be (and how Jesus can tell me it's a picture of me and I'm happy when I can't see it at all)?
So here He was... offering me one more dandelion for my bouquet. One more time I can surrender and accept what it is He is giving me today (the desire to know what I'm going to do next year and the confusion that comes with it -- especially when His answer is, "Close your eyes, Rest, Trust Me."), even if I don't fully understand or see the beauty in it.
