Peru: Day 1.
12-13-09
It is the winter of my freshman year in college. I am 18 years old, and experiencing the hectic state of the peak of finals for the first time in my life. Some of my friends are being really trying right now…some I feel like I am losing and some I just really miss. It’s almost as though my network of friends has fallen through with my starting school. Attending youth group and getting to talk to a bunch of goofy middle schoolers every week is one of the biggest highs of my week… life isn’t too much fun right now.
I’m not going to the school I wish I was at because of financial reasons…and attending community college seems to be becoming more and more daunting. What’s even worse is that some of these classes are actually challenging me. I expected for this year to go by with a perfect 4.0 without effort… little did I know.
Yesterday night I hit a real low…yet another one of my friends I didn’t even realize I slightly depended on, for lack of a better word, dumped me. I really take so much for granted that I can’t even see. I wrote this for my facebook status: When we say one more day…we have already been there. When we ask for one more chance…we’ve already had one. What if we hadn’t had a day or a chance? How difficult is it to comprehend the simplex of having had what we have. What if one more had been one less? Thank the Lord for what you have had. If you had one chance, or one moment at all, He has already given it to you. {make the most of it} It was mainly for my own benefit. I keep on calling out to the Lord to give me direction, to give me worth. I have learned through the past year mainly, but with a little bit earlier in my life, that throughout my life I am going to be serving the Lord, and that I have no greater worth or purpose in life. Maybe that is why he has made me so dependent and lonely…why ever he has, it has worked.
It’s funny how since I was an 11 year old I have wished to have a boyfriend… to have someone to love me, and since then I am yet to find a single guy that I could even possibly, logically date or even like. The ones that I would like, I don’t even have a slight chance with. Even in the small likelihood that I would have a chance with them? They all live SO far away. It’s almost as though the Lord placed my family in the desolate town of [] to prove a point that I am not allowed to date. Real funny, God.
In my goal of finding myself, I have been going through lists of possible futures and more specifically, majors that I could choose for college. While I know I am going to minister for the Lord, I also know that as a woman, pastoral work is not a real option to me. It’s funny, but I almost wish I could just choose to marry a pastor, and to be an amazing wife and woman of God like Stephanie is. If only life were that easy…
A few weeks ago…or maybe it was a few months ago… Kevin, my youth pastor, asked me about going on a missions trip to Peru. He had known that I have a heart for missions for quite some time now. Last week at Acquire the Fire, he mentioned it again to me.
I do not wish to pretend my relationship with my parents is very close. I honestly hardly know my father, other than how to not to make him mad. Being homeschooled, you would think that from spending so much time with my mother…for my entire life, I could say that I know her. I can’t. The previous time (or one of, I can’t remember) that Kevin mentioned my going to Peru, it had stuck on my heart as well. I had also brought it up to my mother and she had turned it down with all sorts of reasons.
Last night was a different story. After a few minutes of explaining everything to her, she seemed to start to relate to me. She was (of course I wouldn’t note this immediately when talking to my own mother…) after all, a missionary. When she was my age, she wanted to be a medical missionary. When she married my father, she originally thought that their purpose in life was to be missionaries. For once in my life, I was really relating to my own mother in something.
This morning in church, I related to Stephanie the positive talk I had had last night with my mom about going to Peru, and I told her that I really was actually interested. About an hour later, after the service, Kevin came up to me and told me how excited he was that I could go with him! …Wait what?
So, all to my own surprise, I actually have the opportunity of going to Peru in only 3 months. Today is the first big day about it, so I hope to keep a journal on all of the important days that come.