God told me to calm down at Starbucks

In just a few short days I head off to Gainesville, Georgia for training camp. The first time I realized it was so close the excitement didn’t necessarily fade, but my stomach turned to knots, and, yes, my hands got clammy. Training camp makes this whole thing real. In just two months, I will be leaving the country. For 11 months.

 

I’m scared.

 

And I want to know. I want to know what to expect. I want to know what camp will be like. I want to know what everyone on the squad will be like. I want to know how my team will be chosen. I want to know who will be on my team. I want to know how exactly I’ll change. I WANT TO KNOW. I’ve even scoured blogs to see if anyone has written anything about camp and what I should expect. (Then inevitably get frustrated that more details aren’t given.)

 

As you may have surmised, I am a TEENSY bit of a control freak and have a TEENSY bit of a “need” to know. Maybe it’s because I’m the youngest child and, therefore, was the last to ever find out about anything, or maybe we all have a control freak in us. I don’t know, but what I do know is that I DO NOT like the unknown. Kinda crazy for someone who just committed to living a life of not really knowing and leaving it up to God, huh?

 

My mind has been going non-stop about next week’s possibilities and today as I sat in a Starbucks, my mind was still race, race, racing. Anyway, I ordered my normal drink, a mocha frappuccino lite, but the barista got it wrong. Instead of a lite, I got a really delicious looking regular mocha frappuccino with whipped cream and chocolate syrup. I sighed and thought, “Oh well, it’s just extra calories, the drink is still good.”  As I was drinking it, a woman came up to me to ask me what I’d ordered.

 

I told her, “Oh my goodness, am I drinking yours?” thinking that they hadn’t made a mistake, but I had and taken hers instead of my lite drink. She laughed and told me, no, that it wasn’t hers, but it looked really good. She went on to ask me what I did for a living. I’ve stopped saying “I used to be a reporter” or “Umm, nothing really, I’m unemployed” and now say “I’m a missionary getting ready to leave on an 11-month mission trip.”

 

We talked a bit, I told her about the trip, she told me about a potential job opportunity and, as it turns out, someone in her family did mission work in Africa. Before she left, she handed me an old, worn piece of paper with faded type on it and told me that she thought I could use the message written on it.

 

 

God has really funny ways of telling me to calm down.