I am a rocket scientist. Ok, that’s a joke…kind of. I majored in aerospace engineering, which is what people are referring to when they say rocket science. I use my degree as a Flight Test Engineer on Boeing commercial experimental airplanes. I get to do and see some pretty amazing things. I love my job. On my airplane, we refer to ourselves and the Rock Stars of experimental flight test and my nickname is supergirl. I love to list my occupation on forms as Rock Star. When I’ve decided I want to accomplish something, I have a friend who says “go rock it supergirl.” And I usually do.
Four years ago, things looked like they were going according to my plan. I had just purchased a loft in the city and landed my dream job. A few years later, God rocked my boat. My plan was unraveling, why was this happening? Because it was my plan, not His. My plan had taken me so far away from Him that the trail had long gone cold. There were no longer any breadcrumbs to follow to see how I had gotten there. During that time, in the middle of a painful breakup of a 5 year relationship, I heard the words “I honestly didn’t know that it was that important to you.” He was right. He didn’t know and how could he? I hadn't showing him. Heck, I wasn’t showing anyone. What was he referring to? My faith. I had spent nearly every day of the last 5 years with this man. Neither he, nor anyone who came into my life, new or old could have guessed that I was a Christian. How did this happen? My world was rocked.
This month marks 2 years since that day, and so much has changed. Before things got better, they got so much worse. God stripped me of everything I was clinging to, so that I would learn again to cling to Him, always. Crawling out of the pit where I landed at rock bottom, I heard Him calling me. It seemed way out of my comfort zone, but answered and I signed up for a 2 week mission trip to Malawi. In the first few minutes of the first group meeting, I knew I hadn’t quite gotten it right. He said it was much bigger. So I looked again, and that’s when I found The World Race.
There is a generation coming of age right now, completely content with their lives as they know it. They are graduating, getting good jobs, settling into relationships, buying nice cars, nice homes, and that’s enough. I almost became one of them. And because I came so close, I will now set an example. I’m leaving my comfortable job as a rocket scientist, rock star, and supergirl. I’m heading to the Philippines, China, South Africa, Mozambique, Swaziland, Serbia, Bulgaria, Eastern Europe, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and El Salvador/Honduras. Eleven countries in eleven months. I will be with the sick, the poor, the parentless, and the desperate. I will learn to love and to grieve with people that I hardly know as God uses me to bring hope to the hopeless. In the past I had given God part of me, now He has all of me. But His love is not only for me. I will go where people think that no one cares, that no one knows they exist, and that they are worthless. I will take their boat, and I’m gonna ROCK IT!!
Fremont Rocket
Seattle, WA
