International Blessings

About this time of year, I start to get creative. Or rather, I want to do something creative. So, feeling that stirring, I picked a project, which slowly unfolded and became something that I wouldn't have imagined when I started. It was cute and simple, easy and inexpensive, and most importantly--creative and unique. I ended up making several of these small gifts, we'll call them tokens of appreciation, and as I did so, I thought about who I would want to send them to, asking myself: who in my life is important and who would I like to bless and encourage with these small tokens? Interestingly enough, most of the people I thought of ended up being amazing friends I met in England. So, once my little project was finished, I high-tailed it to the local post office where I filled out custom form after custom form and paid an arm and a leg to send 8 four-ounce envelopes to 6 different countries which means tomorrow I'm going to have to sell a kidney or two. But the whole time I was making them, I was thinking how grateful I am for these friends around the world, strong, Godly women I was blessed to have met and spend time with and who I hope I will continue to be friends with forever, despite the distance. They have each touched my life, encouraging me and challenging me. I consider each of them such a gift. and I am thankful for them.

There is one friend in particular I've been thinking about and praying for a little more than the others recently. She is my new hero. I met her in January of this year and immediately was jealous of her. I knew from the minute I saw her that she would be amazing. And of course I was right. What amazes me about her is that over the past several months I have watched her say "no" to something I know she wanted because she wanted the will of the Lord for her life more, and that is, I believe, one of the hardest things to do in this life. There was something that she wanted, and could very easily have had, but before diving into it, she stopped and decided to pray, asking the Lord what His heart for her was. At this point, she is now experiencing loss, not receiving what she wanted (and even losing the valued bit that she had). However, she continues to look to the Lord. She knows that what He has for her is better than what she wanted. But her heart is still broken, and she continues to grieve her loss.

This is what amazes me. This is what I strive for. This is my heart for myself and for everyone else. And this is what I believe the Lord wants. Not that we would never be happy or have what we want, but that we would say, just as He said in the garden, "Not my will, but Yours be done." This is what pleases Him. It may very well break our hearts, but it is in the brokenness that He comes to us and shows us who He is. This is where depth and strength come from. This is where character is made, and from that springs hope, the anchor of the soul.

This is just one story. Each of these women have their own stories, and each are equally important and unique. They are such gifts to me and I am so thankful for these international blessings.

Trusting

My visa has arrived! In my mind, my default-to-negative-thinking mind (really must work on that), that is one less thing to go wrong before I leave. That is one less thing to hinder me from going. Is anyone else like this? I'm sure I'm not alone as I admit that when I am presented with an amazing opportunity like this, I really do look around and attempt to spot anything that could thwart it from coming to be. I suppose I am afraid to get my hopes up. I am afraid I will get too excited and it won't happen, for whatever reason. I don't want to be disappointed. But last time I got to go. Why would this time be any different? I don't know, but I'm still looking out for anything that might stand in the way of me going where I want to go.

Yes, I said "me going where I want to go." I have prayed and prayed and prayed about this. I knocked on every door, and every door opened. As I approached the intersection of each obstacle, every light turned green and every obstacle moved, so I got to keep going. But what if, as I approach this last intersection, the light turns red? What if it doesn't happen? I'm not anticipating that, but I don't want to be like the makers of the Titanic who boasted "God Himself could not sink this ship." If, for some reason, this is not the Lord's heart for me and at 11:59pm He says "no," what will I do? How will I respond? Will I be offended and angry that I spent so much time, effort and money investing in something that just didn't turn out? It wouldn't be the first time. Or will I look to the Lord and say, "I don't know what You're doing, but I trust You anyway?" I hope it would be the latter. But more than that, I hope I don't have that test to pass at this point. I hope to be on my way to my beloved country in 16 days and 2 1/2 hours, and I am trusting the Lord to continue to open every door that needs to be opened between now and then.

Going Home

Today is the day I start counting the days, the days I have left, that is. 18 if you care. My visa has been issued, printed and shipped. My plane ticket has been paid for (why are they so expensive??). And my belongings are scattered all over the guest room of my parents' house, waiting to be organized into piles of "what stays" and "what goes."

The last time I left for England I, probably quite foolishly, tried to take clothes for a year. Now I know better. Now I know Primark. England is not another planet; it is entirely possible to buy stuff there. Go figure. I actually miss British stores, Primark, Tesco, Asda, Boots, HMV, etc. and cannot wait to hit them up again. Actually, now that I think about it, I could just take a half-empty suitcase and go shopping when I get there...or better yet, fill the suitcase with books and still go shopping when I get there. You know, random fact, when I went to England in 2012, I took 2 books with me. Before I left, I had 50. Yes, 50. I blame the charity shops--the books are so cheap! This time I think I will take a few more books (just a few) and fewer clothes, but warm clothes. Being in Northwest England in January, I know it will be cold and rainy. Yes, warm clothes and a few books will essentially be what I take with me in two and a half weeks when I leave.

When I leave. It's still sinking in that I am actually going...sometimes it doesn't feel like I'm going. It feels too good to be true. I am afraid I find myself waiting for the other shoe to drop, but it hasn't dropped yet. My departure date is approaching, and as it does, the whole idea, the future that lies before me is becoming more and more real to me. When I leave. I am leaving. I am going home, not to the land of my birth, but to the place that makes more sense to me than anywhere else on this earth, the place I feel more comfortable and more at ease, the place where my heart truly lies, home. England. Yes, I am going home.

The Waiting Room

Everybody knows this room. Everyone, at one point or another, has had to wait. I often think waiting is one of God's favorite tools to getting us where He wants us--the point of maturity. There are other tools He employs, of course, but compared to some that are downright painful (suffering, chastisement), I'm certainly ok with waiting.

Currently I am looking forward to a couple different things--receiving details regarding my specific placement in England (If you're wondering why I haven't told you about that yet, it's simply because I don't know), the approval and arrival of my visa and the day my plane takes off--and I find myself again in the oh-so-familiar waiting room.

So, as we all spend time there, the question remains: what do you do while you're in the waiting room? The are several options. You could complain about the whole situation and count the minutes as they tick by. That will surely make your friends want to hang out with you more. You could waste time with meaningless, frivolous activities. And honestly, I have found myself slipping into that option at times. Or you could embrace the challenge. What is the challenge? To wait well.

How do we wait well? Well, first, we stop whining, complaining, and wasting, and then we make a conscious effort to turn our waiting room into a work room. I won't lie--that's not my idea. I stole it from a preacher's wife. But she's absolutely right. The best thing to do as you wait is to get to work. It doesn't matter what you're waiting for--next week to arrive, your prince to show up or the day you get to retire--working makes the waiting pass faster. And better than that, it's productive! You can wait and work and make the time count in the process. You can be effective while you wait. We are all in the waiting room, to one degree or another. We have all come through one door just to wait to go through another. So let's wait well and make the passage from door to door significant.

Going Back but Looking Forward

So, I'm going back to England! I cannot tell you how excited I was when I found out that I had been accepted to the Pais Project in Great Britain and that the Lord was opening the door for me to return to my beloved country. Not only do I get to go HOME, but I get to serve Him and His Kingdom there!

During my time in England, I will be working with a ministry organization called Pais Project. For 18 months, I will live with a host family (Those poor British people, please start praying for them now!) and work with a small team in several schools and in a local church in a town in the northwest of England. I will receive training in ministry, both through seminars and through hands-on activities.

The goal of Pais is to have missionaries making missionaries, which means I will be working with young people, sharing my faith with them and encouraging them to share their faith with their friends. I will have a mentor and be a mentor. I will get the opportunity to speak life and truth to others, to encourage them in their walk with Christ, and to help them grow in their identity and their destiny in Him, among many other things, I am sure. I am looking forward to all that He has for me to do!

In all of this, I expect to be challenged and to grow. I expect to be stretched beyond what I can imagine now. I expect to be changed. And I expect that it will not be comfortable. However, I also expect that I will be part of something bigger than myself. I expect to be used for the glory of God, and I expect to have an eternal impact on the Kingdom as I allow Him to work in and through me as He desires. This, I know, will be a life-changing experience.

Along the way, I will let you know what is going on and how you can pray for me, the team(s), and the kids we will be working with. I value every partner and every prayer. Just as it takes a village to raise a child, it takes the Church to send a missionary, and this is a team effort! Your input is important, and please know that however you are able to partner with me in this is absolutely appreciated. So, keep checking back for more updates, and if you have questions, leave comments!

Eight Months Later

The last time I wrote (eight months ago, my goodness!), I admitted that I had a problem. Well, I am happy to announce that I no longer have that problem!

In March, I really wanted to stay where I was. I loved the opportunity I was in the middle of and could not imagine leaving. Now, eight months later, I cannot imagine what life would be like if I had stayed. I have been through so much since then, both good and bad, and I feel like a completely different person.

I am so grateful for the year I got to spend as a volunteer at a prayer and conference centre in the United Kingdom. East Sussex is a beautiful place, and I was incredibly blessed to get to live there for a short time. It was a gift from the Lord. In addition, living in the community I lived in with the specific people I lived with, I learned so much about myself and about others. I was taken care of, cooked for, listened to, invested in, and at the same time, I was challenged and forced to grow. Looking back, as in anything probably, there are things I would do differently. I have memories that I cherish and memories that I don't. But in it all,  I am grateful for everything the Lord taught me through that experience.

Although it broke my heart to leave, and the simplest word to describe my time since then is HARD (which is a gross understatement), I know it was exactly the right time for me to go, and I am glad I left when I did. My heart, however, has longed to go back to the United Kingdom, as that is where my heart truly lies. So for months I prayed, asking the Lord to open the door for me to return, to serve His Kingdom in the United Kingdom.

But first, He had to do a work in my heart. He had to bring me to the place of saying, "Put me anywhere." I know beyond a doubt that He exactly arranged my circumstances since coming back from England to bring me to the point where I would be willing to do anything or go anywhere He called me. I believe He wanted my desire to serve Him and His Kingdom to be so great that it did not matter to me where it was. And little by little, He brought me to that place. I finally hit it. He broke me, and I cried out just to be in the centre of His will for my life, whatever that meant. All I wanted was to be a tool, a vessel, to bring Him glory, and I was, indeed, willing to go wherever He called me. So I summoned all the courage I had and asked Him to put me in the best place possible for me, knowing it could be anywhere...

And then, He spoke.

And He said ENGLAND.

I Have a Problem

'Put me anywhere, just put Your glory in me...' This is a line from a song from IHOP KC. Today I was reminded of it, and it has presented me with a problem. The problem is that I can't sing it.

I want to stay here. In this country, in this place. I feel my time has come and gone too quickly and I'm not ready for what lies on the other side of June. I don't want God just to put me anywhere. I want to be in the place that has captured my heart.

With every day that passes, I try and try but I cannot figure out how to stay here. Lovely laws mean that at the end of my 12 months, I have to leave. My heart breaks a little each time I think about it.

I can't even think about it, not really. All I really know is that right now, I want to stay.

There's more

The more I'm here on this adventure, the more I realize there's more to experience. In every way. There are more countries to visit, more people to meet, more friendships to make, more songs to sing, more books to read, more words to write, more hair products to use, more, more, more.

For me, one of the best things about spending a significant amount of time in a different country is discovering that there's more. There are more thoughts, more opinions, more ways of doing things than I originally thought. Things I was closed to or perhaps blind to, I find myself more open to, discovering there are more possibilities. Things I thought I couldn't do before, places I thought I couldn't visit before, adventures I thought I couldn't take before, I am becoming more and more aware that I can. I feel as if the doors to the rest of the world have been opened to me. I can go anywhere, I can do anything. I feel free to go, to do, to be...more.

Entertaining Angels

It's not every day I speak with a Dame on the telephone, so I was hesitant at first to believe her. But I quickly googled her and found out that yep, she is in fact a Dame and the first black woman to be given the title, presented with the honor due to the immense amount of charity work she's done on behalf of the aged in this country. Hm.

Considering this situation for a moment, I was reminded of a time last fall when a regular guest at our conference centre, a middle-aged African man, began speaking with me. He would wander into the bookshop as I was manning the till and while perusing the merchandise, begin asking me questions about myself. I answered them as vaguely as I possibly could. I mean, this man was a stranger. But he began to encourage me and remind me of the hope that God has for me. I found out after he left that he's the head of a large group of churches in West Africa. 'He's what??' I thought when I found out. I had no idea.

Today we have an award-winning, tv-appearing, book-publishing celebrity chef in the kitchen. He's a friend of the conference centre and has come specifically to help us improve the way our kitchen functions.

To me, these people seem special and there's a desire within me to treat them as such. Realizing that, I began to question why I should feel they are important. In His Kingdom, the Lord makes no distinction. Rich, poor, famous, obscure, they're all the same to Him. So why should I care? Why should this person be any more significant, treated with any more regard than another, than, say, one of the children of the large group we hosted last week who kept running past my desk despite the fact that I continually asked them to walk, who kept pestering me for more snooker cues, who repeatedly asked my friend manning the bookshop what they could buy with their 15p? The answer: they aren't and they shouldn't be.

'Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some have unwittingly entertained angels.' -Hebrews 13:2

So who are the angels? Are the angels the celebrities, those honored with earthly rewards, those who lead large groups of people? Maybe. But maybe they're the kid in front of the counter wanting more chocolate. How do I know? I don't. And because I don't know, how should I treat them? As if they all were angels.

The Rain in Spain...

'The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain...'

 But it's the rain in England that I love.

Eliza Doolittle, England's Cockney flower 'gel' cared more about proper pronunciation than European weather despite the fact that she talked about it so much. And whether or not Hertford, Hereford & Hampshire ever have hurricanes, I don't know, but rain in Spain? Really? Does it actually rain there? And exactly where, might I ask, is the plain? There are mountains somewhere, in the north I think. So the plain is in the south? I must admit I know pretty much absolutely nothing about Spanish geography. Or weather, come to think of it. So the fact that the rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain means very little to me.

But English weather is entirely different. For me, and most people I think, England equals rain, and it doesn't stay in just one place. It rains everywhere. The last time I was fortunate enough to live in England, which was more years ago than I care to remember, the rain made quite an impression on me, as in, I was constantly wet, and my hair, of course, was frizzier than ever. So to prepare for this particular British adventure, I made sure that in addition to mousse and maximum-hold hair spray, I had an umbrella and a raincoat, neither of which I ever use at home. What I failed to buy were Wellies. In America, most people don't have Wellies. We pop from the house to the car to the shop to the car and back home again, enduring wet feet, knowing they will soon be dry. For us, the rubber rainboots are quintessentially British, and even now, British fashion (Thank you Duchess of Cambridge.). So I didn't think to buy them. But now that I've been trapped inside for seven months, not because I mind the rain but because I mind cold, wet & muddy feet, I believe perhaps it's time to invest in a pair. Yes, it's time to get out, to put on the boots and embrace the weather, because I live in England and there's no getting around the rain. The only thing to do is accept it and love it. Why love it? Because it's English, of course. Without it, England would not be England. The rain is part of what makes this country the way it is. It has contributed to the culture of the land and the pastimes of the people. It has helped shape a unique nation that I, for whatever reason, seem to be permanently attached to. And so to those who have allowed me to live here, to experience England (again) in all it's waterful glory, I have one thing to say: How kind of you to let me come.

Let the adventure continue!

Wait, what adventure? Is this an adventure? Day by day, this life doesn't seem so 'adventurous.' Nothing like you see in movies like Seven Years in Tibet or Eat Pray Love where people dare to go off to strange lands and experience new and different things. Sometimes they have a hard time of it, other times it seems they've found home, but it's always so inspirational(?) watching people completely change their lives in a matter of a few hours. But I'm coming to realize that life doesn't really work like that. I've lived in England now for 7 months, and I love it. I could stay here forever (and I just might, if I can figure out how!) but my life is not at all like a movie. I have my day-in, day-out, weekly routine. I have work I have to do. I have friends I enjoy. Although it's very much like a bubble, in some aspects it's not far different from 'normal' life. Perhaps it's over the years that the adventure happens; after all, it is called Seven YEARS in Tibet (can you imagine?). And how long did it take Julia Roberts to hit Italy, India & Indonesia? I don't remember, I didn't really enjoy the film and haven't read the book. But I'm thinking, adventure takes time. How long, I don't know. What I do know is that I'm willing to invest the time. It's worth it to me, this grand expedition I'm on. Where it will take me in this world, I have no idea. I just know two things: It's going to be good and my hair will still be frizzy.