Well, I'm off again. In one month exactly, I'm taking a flight to Texas and will cross the border to Mexico where I will work at an orphanage for the next year. I will be working in the baby home there and I'm not sure exactly what that will entail, but I'm excited to see what God will do.
But before you all hear all my updates, I think you should hear the back story.
Last year, I went to this orphanage and out of the blue felt a strong calling to work in the new baby home there. Since the calling was so outside of my own plans, seemed so clear, and I had no clue what else to do, I immediately made it my post-highschool plan. I was going to Mexico for a year and now had no need to find an answer to the famous what-are-you-doing-after-highschool question. God's plan became an excuse for me not to trust him.
Then things started to go awry. I heard nothing from the orphanage for months, and graduation was looming closer. At first, I nonchalantly assumed that because I had what ought to be divinely inspired plans, there was nothing to fear, it would all work out. But time kept ticking and nothing moved.
And then, things moved.... in the wrong direction. The baby home wasn't expected to open in time for me to go. I began to flounder. How did I "miss" God's plan? What would I do now? As I tried to answer that last question, I delayed. I couldn't miss God's will again and mess up; this time of life was too important to my future to choose something quickly. That and I had no back-up plan whatsoever.
But as I walked through choosing what to pursue, I began realizing that if my faith in God--a real, living, tangible, active, powerful God-- is real, I no longer needed to fear that a choice could mess up my life. If God is who he says he is, there's no way that I can thwart his plan for my life. And since I'm his child, won't that inescapable plan be good? Through the whole Mexico process, I had misused God's plan for me as an excuse to not act and therefore not actively trust that God would shape my life into something good. God started to show me that his plan was designed to give me rest from fear and worry, but not rest from action and trust.
Another gem that I found in this process was God's attitude toward me. I had decided not to trust God, something I'm blatantly commanded to do, and yet God still acted kindly toward me. My sin didn't negate God's goodness, God was loving even in the midst of my sin and gave me what I wanted because he's kind even when I disobey.
As I'm writing this, I know that some of you might be rolling your eyes right about now. You don't believe in all this God stuff, the universe would have let me go to Mexico anyway and I'm attributing my luckiness to God's providence. I understand the vastness of the belief required to believe my tale and I might not even believe it if I hadn't experienced it. But the truth is that God isn't just a director in the sky setting everything up according to his plan, I believe in him because he's a personal God, one who I heard speak to me when I was in Mexico a year ago. I know a blog post can never completely explain what I'm talking about and why I believe in God, and it was never supposed to. I just know that I can't tell this story without talking about God because he's so involved in it, but at the same time I don't want any of my friends or family to disregard what I have to say because I talk about God. If you ever have questions or want to challenge what I believe, I'm open to talking. In the mean time, I hope you'll stick around and follow me on my Mexican adventure.
So, sit back and get ready to hear about how I fail at speaking Spanish, how I'm adjusting to baby hours (no sleep, oh yay!), and God's grace through it all. I'm sure it'll be entertaining!
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