So . . . This Is Really Happening.

I packed up my career into 2 cardboard boxes and 2 Trader Joe's bags (1 for smelly socks, 1 for my steel-toed boots) yesterday.

My room is currently a tornado of World Race packing, things to donate/sell, and miscellaneous knick-knacks that I'm too attached to throw away but I know I can't keep.

I've been calling the pharmacy every day with travel prescriptions, my one-way flight has been booked to Washington D.C. for July 1st (we launch from D.C.), I'm saying goodbyes and see-you-laters all the time. The clock keeps ticking, and I'm anxiously checking corners and pockets for forgotten items and dropped to-do lists. 

If someone else thinks they have reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more:

Upon my final exit from my office building, I thought, "This is it, Jesus. Everything I could hide behind, take confidence in, boast in, achieve in my own strength… it's gone." I was a Recession Grad in 2010, and the ease at which I transitioned into my career was such a point of pride for me. After all, wasn't it I who graduated with the college degree? Didn't I show up to work every day and give 110%? Didn't I earn my promotion through hard work and discipline? 

But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith.

I'm realizing anything I've ever 'achieved' was done by the grace and blessing of God. And although the reality of departure from everything I've valued and worked for should be inducing major panic attacks right now, my spirit is at peace.

While I have a heart for working in the marketplace, the Lord has called me to this season of traditional missionary work to break my heart, impact lives, and usher in the Kingdom of God. And I do all these things knowing my identity lies in being a daughter of the Most High God, not the temporal labels of this world.

I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead . . .Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

My World Race support account currently reads $8,699.33, which means I'm funded enough to get on the plane to Bulgaria this July. Thank you to those who have sown into my ministry and prayed for me! I'm still about $6,800 shy of being fully funded, so please continue to donate if you feel led (click on this link). 

This is really happening. Let's do this.