A few months ago I had a one of my managers at Striplings, Mr Keith tell me that I needed to go paint a house!! He told me that I needed to find something I was passionate about, to find a charity, or nonprofit, or go on a missions trip, or even just paint a house for someone who needs it but can’t do it their self! He told me to pour my heart completely into whatever it might be, because when I’m doing that I would learn the most valuable lesson, that when you find something your passionate about it’s never considered work! See he saw something in me that I didn’t see at the time! He saw my restlessness coming to the surface with no where to go, it had started to effect me at work because I knew deep inside that there had to be something more then just a 9-5 job, something more than punching into work to just punch out and go home as fast as possible!!
At first when he told me to “go paint a house” I was confused, and a little hurt! I remember crying because I thought he was telling me that I wasn’t doing a good enough job at work, or that my heart wasn’t in the right place, but boy was I so wrong about that!! After some time had passed I started to look for “a house”, I realized that I did in fact need something that I could pour myself into, but I didn’t want it to be something right down the street from my house because that sounded to easy! I knew that if it was something at home I would be looking to all my friends and family for some kind of validation that I was doing a good job, and that would’ve taken all of the passion out of what I was doing and made into something selfish!!
Then when World Race Semesters came into my life I honestly forgot about the whole “go paint a house” thing until today…
The first few days we’re here and even a couple days last week, and yesterday my team and myself have spent a lot of time Painting the School!! I didn’t even realize it while it was happening, but I’ve found my “house”! Not once while I was painting did I stop and think or say “man, this is such hard work!” I often at the end of the day when I would be so tired I couldn’t barely think straight I’d find myself saying “why am I so tired!? All I did was paint today!?”. Then it hit me, I was pouring everything I had into painting this school so that when school starts back here in a couple days, the kids will have a beautiful place that they could be excited about to coming to! I found something I was passionate about, and it involved painting!!?!?
There’s was one day when I told one of my teammates “I hope I never have to paint a black line ever again!” And almost right after I said it I felt God saying “but what if I call you to do that??”, talk about wake up call! God has been teaching me so much about myself and who I am, and he keeps finding ways to remind me everyday that this day doe not belong to me, but it belongs to him!! And he will lead me to do whatever he wants me to do, no if’s, ands, or buts!! That’s what I want to claim for the rest of my life, that no matter what it is or where it’ll take me as long as God is the one telling me to go I’ll go!!
Thank to Mr Keith for being the best example of what a good teacher and manager should look like, and for being the great example of how a leader should lead that you are!! Thank you for telling to “go paint a house!”, I guess God knew that that house was actually gonna turn out to be a School in the middle of rough area in Trujillo Peru!!!
