Preparations are under way for the World Race! As of the writing of this post, I bought just about all of my “main gear” (sleeping pad/bag, tent, pack, etc.), received my yellow fever vaccine, and FINALLY got my passport. Woo! What a crazy couple of months it has been! Truth be told, I had so much fun doing all of that stuff! It makes me so excited knowing that I am only a few short months from training camp (not even counting launch in January)!
Still, there have been many things I have experienced in preparation for the Race that I did not expect, and some of those things were things that I did not WANT to experience. At least not at the time. But the Lord works in mysterious ways, so we can rest assured that after the trial has passed, we are built up even stronger than before. Like a phoenix rising from the ashes.
In no particular order, here is some of what I have learned so far (both pleasant and not-so-pleasant).
When the Lord really calls us to something, we don’t need to worry about our finances. This has been one of the most surprising things I have learned! All the money we (as the family of God) have is the Lord’s. Really, we hold on to money as a loan from Him, but He will move the finances where He needs them to be moved in order to provide for us.
God loves a cheerful giver, and so do I. Honestly, I have tried to approach fundraising like “your typical missionary” with fundraising letters and (attempted) phone calls. But that did not seem like me at all, so I couldn’t go through with it. I am not the kind of guy to ask you to donate a certain amount. I prefer to just talk to anyone who will listen about what the Lord has called me to and trust that they will donate if the Lord puts it on their heart to do so. Passive? Maybe. But my biggest fear in this area is that I will try to manipulate or guilt people into donating, and I would rather be 100% self-fund than make people feel obligated.
The enemy, unfortunately, does not sleep. I have been hit with a lot of fears in the few short months that I have been preparing. But I have also learned that Satan attacks us where he fears us the most. In other words: our insecurities aren’t OUR insecurities. They are his.
- Fear of putting myself out there? Satan is TERRIFIED of what the Lord will do with me outside of my comfort zone, so he is trying to keep me from allowing myself to be vulnerable.
- Fear that I am not interesting enough to connect with others? He’s trying to keep me away from others because he is afraid that the Lord might use me to be a blessing to someone else (and equally afraid that someone else might be a blessing to me)
- Fear of not writing a “good enough blog”/writer’s block? He’s scared of how powerfully the Lord may work or speak through these posts, so he tries to distract me with negative thinking.
- No energy to socialize or take care of myself after a long few days of work? He wants me to burn out so that I grow resentful and ultimately become a jaded, angry-at-the-world kind of guy, contrary to the way the Lord has intended for me to live my life.
If Satan distracts us enough from the Lord’s original intention for our lives, he wins.
Working as a nurse for the last two years has so far been instrumental in preparing me for my eventually calling to the mission field (not just my future endeavors in the field of medicine). I wanted to be a missionary since I first gave my life to the Lord YEARS before I even knew I wanted to be a nurse. But over the years, I put that desire on the back burner. Little did I know that when I become a nurse, I was actually preparing my heart for what’s to come in ways that I didn’t even realize until now.
Nursing, to be pretty blunt, is often a thankless job. Some days, I literally walk miles for my patients in order to pick up their home medication that was locked up in our pharmacy when they were first admitted to the hospital. I will personally scrub the floor by hand to make sure a patient’s shower is clean enough for them to get in. I will give them a bed bath in the middle of my med pass to make them feel more comfortable. I will bend over backwards to make one of them laugh or smile after a long couple of days or after a bad pathology report. But in the end, it sometimes still isn’t enough. And some doctors will become upset that you did not prioritize their patient over the others. And some nurses will judge you for a silly question or request. Even this week, an unprovoked nurse actually told me that I am not as good of a nurse as they are (and in case you are wondering, this was a float nurse, not a nurse I typically work with).
BUT (and it’s a big ol’ but), if being told “thank you” or getting reassurance by my coworkers and other staff members held the highest importance to me, I would have quit my job long ago. Truth is, I love that I am a nurse. I love that I have grown tough (in some ways), can manage five patients at once with minimal assistance, and feel confident in my nursing skills. AND, despite how difficult any day may be, I manage to come in every morning again with a smile on my face and a newfound optimism for making that shift even better than the last one. But what I love most is that while no one sees what I do on a daily basis, the Lord does. And I know that He understands my frustrations and sees me try to push through them to be the best nurse that I can possibly hope to be for my patients. Even this week, I’ve been feeling even more convicted about the way I approach nursing as a whole. A call to nursing is really a call servanthood.
In a similar, yet much more powerful way, Jesus also came to serve and not be served. He did the job that no one wanted to do, and He wasn’t always thanked by the people He healed, instructed, served, and even died for. He knew exactly how people would treat Him, but He still did all of that for them, for me, for you ANYWAY. He is the prime example of sacrificial love. He showed us what it means to have a servant’s heart.
The path to discovering your purpose is not an easy one, and when you finally find even a small portion of your calling, it often gets even more difficult. But our God is a God who calls us despite the difficulties that lie ahead, and if we continue to acknowledge Him in all that we do, He will make our paths straight.
In all things, be blessed!
AG
