My little teenage self, just 10 years ago.
I see you, about to take that little step. The little step that feels like a giant leap, because it's a little step into eternity.
I see you, in anguish, standing alone in the back of your dad's coffee shop, waiting for your shift to finish and waiting for life to make sense. Waiting for things to click. You are so close, dear one.
I can see you even now, as I sit at home with tears in my eyes, listening to the Honduran birds chatter, and the boys you will come to love so fiercely playing in the distance. If only you could see everything that is waiting for you, and it all begins in just a few moments.
Soon your wandering mind will spiral with thoughts about the future, and your place in it. You will hoist the world onto your 15-year-old shoulders and feel every bit of its weight. You will start to wonder what you were put in that world for. You'll feel like all is lost, and that life has brought you to this point and no further. And while your head is spinning with where to go from here, you will go back to that mission trip you took with your youth group, just a few weeks earlier. You will silently wish your life could be just like that perfect week full of worship and service.
And then that moment will happen.
The moment God speaks, or rather, the moment God moves you so that you have no doubt as to your purpose here.
The moment God calls you to the mission field.
Your head will clear, your heart will calm, and your soul will dance with joy as you realize that life will never be the same. A smile comes to your face that won't be wiped off for some time. Cherish that feeling of overwhelming peace, my friend. You have yet to feel it quite like that again, but you have the memory to reassure you.
You will make the silent drive home with your father, almost bursting at the seams with the news, because you want to tell your parents together. You will sit them down and announce that you have changed your life plans. They will patiently listen, and pledge their support to your dream, a support that will never waver. A support that will eventually spur them to leave everything they've known to come and help you make your dreams come true. But that is a different story, a story for another day.
I told you to cherish the peace of that day, dear one, because there will come other days in which the memory of that peace is all you have to keep you moving forward. Hard days are coming. People who doubt you, situations that break you. You will face your fears and develop new ones. You will be brought to the brink and back again, only by the grace of God.
But for now, life is perfect. You will leave the country for the first time, and it is everything you imagined and more. Still just 15, you will vow to learn a language and become an interpreter so no one else will have to feel the frustration you will feel as you try to communicate with the little Costa Rican children attending Bible School. That dream comes true, too.
Your grandmother will pass away the day after you come back from your perfect trip, and you will learn the hard lesson: that being a missionary means giving up a lot of precious things. Not things like fast internet and air conditioning-things like being able to say goodbye to a loved one before they pass away. Your aunt will tell you how proud your grandmother was that you decided to become a missionary, but the loss will still sting.
Time will march on and you will become anxious to finish school and move on to the rest of your life, but you're not ready yet, dear one. There are things you need to learn, but more importantly, there are people you need to meet. Like the heroes you came to look up to on your first trip to the Dominican Republic, and the team of Dominicans who quickly became your family.
Oh, there's nothing like that feeling! The feeling you will get when you walk out of the Santo Dominigo airport into the Dominican sunshine for the first time. It will truly be love at first sight, just wait and see. You will question your feelings for several years, but it really is in that instant that you will have known: you would be coming back here, and you would call it your home.
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| The moment you will decide to move to the DR (June 2010) |
The path will seem long, and sometimes unnecessary, but it is all so vital. You will graduate from high school and and count down the days until college. You will watch your dad close those coffee shop doors forever, and observe from a distance while he begins his own journey to full-time ministry. Someday you will learn that your mom already received her own calling to the mission field years before you, but by faith she waited, waited until her family was also ready. You will mourn the loss of that shop, the place that witnessed so many important moments (especially the one you are about to experience), but in time you will truly see how God can work everything for good.
During college you will meet people who are very important in your life. You will meet true friends who will last a lifetime. You will meet professors who challenge you and encourage you to be all who God is calling you to be. Soak up what the wisdom they pass along to you, because when it's over you will be wishing for more.
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| You will miss these people! (May 2011) |
And then the day will come. The day you have been preparing for, the day for which your soul has been crying out. Your parents will have decided to join you, and together you will strike out on an adventure together. And on that day, that special day, the day you will finally become a true missionary-
-you will show up at the wrong airport, and miss your flight.
Don't fret, dear one. You may never know how such an important detail escaped you, and your entire family, but you will discover that it was another small step leading you toward a more relaxed way of living. You see, during your first year on the mission field you will come up against challenges you never thought possible to endure. Friends will hurt you, self-doubt will cripple you, and Satan will be there, lurking and finding ways to make you fail every day. You will cry more in that first year than you have in the past five years put together. The stress you put on yourself from all of the problems you encounter will cause even physical sickness, and you will finally realize something:
A missionary that frets will either become broken beyond repair, or she will leave the ministry.
Neither of those options will be acceptable to you, and so you will change. You will calm down. You will let things go. You will laugh when everything goes wrong, because everything will go wrong. You will feel broken beyond repair, but you aren't. You will be okay. Remember that, alright? You will be okay.
You will have happy days too. You will have days where you can't imagine how life could get any better, because everything seems so perfect. And the amazing thing is that it does get better, and every time it will surprise and delight you.
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| These are some people who will surprise and delight you the most. |
Your time in the Dominican will be shorter than you planned, which will be devastating, but it will also teach you important things, like how to kill cockroaches without having to call your dad, and how to see people with the intense and deep love that God has for them. Your Dominican coworkers will become your brothers, in every sense of the word. In the sense that you argue together, laugh together, cry together, and drive each other completely insane, but at the end of the day, you will have their backs and they will have yours. Those are the things you will think back on long after you have left. Not the struggles and the pain, but the overwhelming joy, and the unbreakable bonds that were formed even during the short time on your beloved island.
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| A couple of your brothers (December 2014) |
You will celebrate your first Christmas ever without the rest of your family. It will feel like a normal day, and that will make you a little sad.
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| Some presents under the Christmas fan (December 2014) |
Your niece will be born, and you will finally understand the full sacrifice you have made by choosing to follow your calling. You won't say it out loud, but you will feel the loss of every birthday, every graduation, every holiday celebration, and every family get-together that you just get to witness from afar. You will watch your niece grow up before your eyes through Facebook and Snapchat, and you will wonder if she will even remember your name or know who you are. Don't fret, dear one. You have a beautiful family who will go to great lengths to make sure you still feel a part of it. She will know you, and you will have your time of adventure together. Just wait and see.
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| Road trip! (April 2017) |
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| Catching up on FaceTime (September 2015) |
You will experience re-entry into the U.S. and feel the full weight of reverse culture shock. It will feel like no one understands the loss that you will experience after saying goodbye to your Dominican family. The painful process of moving on, paired with the uncertainty of the future will cause anxiety to take hold of your life for a time. You will feel weak-but you are not. You will feel like a failure-but you are not. You will hold on a little longer, because life is about to make another surprising change.
Somehow, seemingly miraculously, you will find yourself back in Honduras, where you will have spent a summer in college, and where you will find another whole family to be a part of. At first you worry that every step you take towards a new home will take you one step further from the Dominican home you left behind, but it's not true. You will be amazed at how big your heart grows to fit everyone inside.
Are you ready?
No, you're not. But that's the beautiful part about it.
Are you ready?
Three...
Two...
One.
