limited

In many ways I feel worlds different than the last time I posted. I am wrapping up a summer of living in a staff communal house, with chaotic dinners and borrowed cereal and shared bowls of popcorn. Our room is a constant tornado of clothes, papers, books, and sand. Sand, everywhere. For the first time in a long time, I felt known. I didn't feel the need to smile when I was with them, which is how I define true friendship.

I had four girls whom I discipled this summer and three of the four are criers. We're talking every Bible study, every discipleship, crying. Every time. I made it through somehow, helping them navigate their wild emotions and bridle them to be used by Christ, rather than being a hindrance to Him. And my prayer still is that 2 of my 4 women would go to the nations.

The nations. God gripped my heart with His heart for the world this summer. He reminded me why I'm on staff with Cru. Not just to help students, not just to reach the students on my campus, but to pour into them, push them far enough into the heart of God to see that His heart beats wildly for the nations who do not know Him, who have not heard of Jesus. And I cannot escape it anymore, not in His Word, and not in His heart.

All the nations you have made shall come and worship before You, oh Lord,
and shall glorify Your name.
Psalm 86:9

And it was during the week of mulling over all of this that we got the call asking us to lead a missions trip to the Middle East next summer. Of course we prayed about it, but how could we not? How could we not go to where so few know? We said yes, and next summer we will lead a small group of students to help pioneer student ministries where there are none, in a town where hundreds of nations are represented. I can almost feel my heart beating stronger now, as I'm settling into my calling as His daughter to go and preach, to be part of the Great Commission.

I am also a mother now. There is a wee one the size of a beet growing in there, they say it's moving and kicking around though I can't yet feel it. This was a bit of an interruption to the story we'd crafted for ourselves even a few months ago, and I am still getting used to this now being my story and my role. But I have heard the heartbeat, and in six months I will be holding a creature that we "made" but really have not made. It's quite a mystery to be the environment in which the Lord knits a new person together, and I have definitely felt the prods of His craftsmanship. Why the Lord has chosen me to be a mother while others navigate the murky waters of infertility is beyond me, I do not have an answer for that. I am scared, excited, honored, humbled, uneasy, and nervous.

But the Lord has been faithful. Our baby will not stop us from that 20 hour flight to the Middle East because nothing stopped Him from coming to us. Our baby will not stop me from doing ministry on campus, but rather will simply change the way I do ministry on campus. Rather than my roles diminishing, I see them morphing and, in a way, enlarging. He is faithful.

I write this in a crowded Starbucks in one of my last few days in North Myrtle. I am quieted, I am thankful, I am hopeful.