Something Heavenly...

The young man was ready to follow Jesus. He knew he had kept all of the commandments. And he wanted eternal life. Surely, since he had followed all the rules, he was a candidate for heaven. He prayed regularly. He even believed that Jesus could do miracles. He believed that Jesus had the answers he was looking for: How can I have eternal life?

When he saw Jesus coming, he walked straight up to him and said “Father, what must I do to have eternal life?” Jesus stopped, looked at him and said, “If you want to enter life, keep the commandments.”Jackpot, the young man thought. I’ve done that! Jesus continued saying “‘You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, ¹⁹ honor your father and mother, and ‘love your neighbor as yourself.’”

Check. Check. Double check. “All these I have kept,” the young man said. “What do I still lack?”

 Jesus answered, “Go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

At that, the young man turned, completely heartbroken, because he was not ready to give up his comfort…

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I knew God was calling me to England. I felt from the very first moment of hearing about someone student teaching abroad that Christ had that in store for me. I wasn’t sure of what the plan was, but I just knew I was supposed to go.

God let me in on a little bit of His plan 2 days ago. The second graders were all at specials and I was working on homework for OSU. I heard a “Miss Callie?” behind me. I turned around and there was one of my students about to burst into tears. Earlier, she had gotten “in trouble” for excluding some of the other girls (Think Mean Girls… “you can’t sit with us!”). When I confronted her about it, she just started crying. Really crying. I didn’t know if it was because she was confronted or if it was something else. Her mom is deployed right now so I thought that might have had something to do with it. So that was my first thought when I saw her about to cry again alone in our classroom. She came up to me and said “I’m not crying this time about friends or even about my mom being gone” and then she shared sad news with me. I won’t go into details but this little girl is hurting. She really started crying when she said “Daddys don’t even know how to braid hair!” Girl, I know! That made me chuckle thinking of my dad trying to dress me and do my hair all by himself. So I told her that if she wants to come in early before school I will brush and do her hair every day. So that has been our new routine. It’s pretty fun for me because it is like having a doll again that I can play with and do their hair. But I am realizing that, today, I am needed here. She chose me to share her pain with. She felt comfortable telling me.  I am needed today to be present and aware of my student’s joys and my student’s pains.

I am also starting to realize that God is using this experience- getting me out of my comfort zone, taking me into the unknown, leaving my family, trusting in Him- to prepare me for something else. God has really been using Matthew 19 to show me that to be a TRUE follower of Christ, we must sacrifice it all to him. We have to be uncomfortable. This can look very different. This could mean dropping everything, everyone, and moving to Uganda at the age of 18 to start an orphanage/school and adopt 14 Ugandan girls like she did. It could mean loving the women in your neighborhood, the ones that are not easy to love like she does. It could be choosing to love your spouse daily so that you can learn more of the love of Christ and the church like they do. It could mean a lot of things. All I know is that I think God is introducing me to this life of “being uncomfortable”, of being pushed to get out of my comfort zone, of relying solely on the only One who matters.

Yikes.

God used one of my all time favorite songs to encourage me in this:

There's a wave that's crashing over me
And all I can do is surrender

Whatever You're doing inside of me
It feels like chaos but somehow there's peace
It's hard to surrender to what I can't see
But I'm giving in to something Heavenly

Whatever You're doing inside of me
It feels like chaos but I believe
You're up to something bigger than me
Larger than life, something Heavenly

-       Whatever You’re Doing, Sanctus Real