Have you ever had times in your life where you go from being on a great emotional high only to fall into an intense low shortly after that? That’s been the past two months in a nutshell.
At the STIRRED conference I got to enjoy an amazing reunion with maybe 1/2 of my World Race family. At home though, I was friendless. Not much changed after I got back to Texas. I missed my World Race family and I was immediately expecting the church to fill in that gap…without any effort on my part. I had a lot of excuses for holding back, but regardless, in all honesty, I was being incredibly lazy and wallowing in my own pity party for far too long.
Sad to say, it took another two months before I just couldn’t take it any more. I could hear God getting restless with me, but I kept shutting Him out. I’m sorry He had to see me behave so pathetically really.
One night, I looked up nearby churches on the internet and was drawn to one that (sadly?) was only 15 minutes away from where I’m currently living. I went the next night to their college-age Bible study and since then…it’s like I’ve made a complete 180!
God is grafting me into a community of believers that remind me a lot of my WR family, but I love that they’re not. We’re being intentional about fellowship and digging right in beyond the surface level chit chat. I’m actually reading my Bible again, listening to spiritual music, praying fervently and becoming more bold in a lot of areas in my life. It’s as if the past two months never happened. My WR family would periodically tell me that I have a spiritual gift of speaking wisdom. These people didn’t know that…and they’re saying the same thing. God is using me and challenging me to do my share as a member of His body, the Church. He’s also moving me into opportunities of leadership at work and with my new friends in this college ministry.
I made a commitment to God to stay with my new social work job for at least 2 years–so that means no long-term missions for awhile. However, I keep receiving the word “leadership” and my passion for missions has just intensified. Maybe I can’t go long-term…but there are still options. In fact, last Thursday, I applied to lead one of AIM’s Ambassadors summer trips. Since researching their trips, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about their 2-week Haiti trip at the end of June. So if I get an interview, that’s what I’m going for. And get this…one of my first squad leaders sent me a message on Facebook just a few hours ago saying she thought of me earlier and thought I should apply to lead an Ambassadors or RealLife trip this summer. Um….WHAT?! Did that just happen?? She had no idea that I had just applied for that maybe 4 days ago! Yay confirmation!
So that’s an update an a World Racer still trying to figure things out. There’s so much more I could share. But I’m finally back to living my life and living in a spirit of expectancy as I think God wanted for me all along. 🙂
-Issa
