Adventure is out there.
Please excuse the tacky "Up" quote opening, but it was the first thing that came to mind when I reflected on this past year. It's December 30, 2014, and, since the roads are too icy to drive on, I have the privilege of letting my introvert self sit in my bed and blog and reflect on this past semester (and life in general I guess). (<-- these alone moments are incredibly scarce when living in a dorm with six hundred others girls)
Since three years ago, my life has been marked with travel. Within two years, I went to Haiti, Poland, the Philippines, Italy, and Los Angeles, and I am currently planning for a semester abroad in Spain. These mission trips came only naturally since I had wanted to do missions since second grade. However, I hadn't fully grasped the concept of missions until this past semester.
In my mind, missions was tied with Isaiah 6:8.
"Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, 'Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?' And I said, 'Here am I. Send me!'"
Missions was synonymous to leaving. It was about God sending me some place else; being a missionary meant packing up, leaving familiarity, and going "out there" (you know, where adventure is according to the sweet Asian boy in Up). I'd always been comfortable with this idea. I even have a journal filled with places I want to go someday. Even when I reached high school, I asked to transfer, simply so I could leave what was familiar to me. When applying for college, I was desperate to find somewhere away from home, liberal, and diverse. When looking at what I wanted to do, I looked for a job that would get me in and out of school quickly so that I could leave for a third world country as soon as possible.
But, as usual, God wasn't asking me to say, "Here I am; I'll go."
Instead, He changed my heart to say simply: "Here I am."
His will wasn't for me to go at all. During my first semester of college, I attended a Christian conference called World Mandate. College students from around Texas came and gathered for the sole purpose of celebrating Jesus and getting fired up about missions. At one point in the evening, the worship band asked us to spend a moment in silence and ask God to break our hearts for a specific country. After three days of being spiritually saturated, I felt like I could hear God so clearly, and I was excited to hear exactly what he wanted for me.
And while those around me were getting revelations of nations and peoples and visions, I heard God tell me, "Stay." For a moment, I was crushed at the thought of being here. But I realized God has been asking me to stay all along.
When I asked to go to public school, Jesus showed me how to grow and love at my own school. When I asked to go to the University of Texas, God told me to go to Baylor. When I asked to have a career that would let me leave as soon as possible, he made it so clear to me that what he wanted me to do would make me stay in the U.S. for at least twelve more years.
And I couldn't be more grateful.
Adventure is not always "out there." Adventure is wherever God wants us. Sometimes he asks us to pursue it, but other times, the real adventure begins without having to take a step. Thank Jesus that loving God is not contingent on my location. So whether we stay or we go, may my heart always stay in the position of saying, "Here I am-- going or staying-- here I am."
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