It hits me sometimes: I’m quitting my job to live out of a backpack for eleven months.
What in the world am I doing? How did I get here?
I could tell you that God called me, but I think those words can sometimes be confusing. Did God shoot me a text? Make a bush in my backyard catch fire? Wake me up in the middle of the night via disembodied voice? DM me on instagram?
In American Christian culture, we call confusing phrases like this “Christian-ese”. So what does it mean to be called by God? What do I mean when I say “I feel called to be a missionary”? For me, this calling wasn’t the result of a single, life-changing moment, but rather a sequence of highlighted moments throughout my journey. Each has revealed more and more, giving me further direction and specificity.
June 2007: Hume Lake
I am a sophomore in high school, and the speaker asks us to stand if we feel called to be a missionary in a foreign country. In the middle of 1,000 teenagers, God pulls me to my feet. What am I doing? Why am I standing? I think.
Nevertheless, I know this is right.
November 2013: Lauje, Indonesia
As my junior year of UCLA comes to a close, God asks me to withdraw from my group of friends. I have been struggling with depression on and off for four years, and the shrapnel of these broken relationships will ricochet through the next year, until I feel sick to my stomach even walking into a church.
I don’t think I can keep going.
Through his grace, God uses a family friend to connect me with a missionary family providing helicopter support for tribes in Indonesia. (There are still tribes in the world? I thought everywhere was civilized.) They need a homeschool helper, and I have always wanted to study abroad.
I agree to go, but not visit a tribe. I’ve heard stories of both martyrs and cannibals. And then God moves again: the Pyle’s tell me about a tribe that only has the book of Genesis in their language.
Only Genesis.
Meanwhile, in America, churches splinter over which of our many translations is the most accurate.
Imagine if you only had one book, God whispers to my heart.
How precious, how treasured that book would be! I can’t imagine being without God’s words, or only being able to read them in German, my second language. So when an opportunity arises to spend three days in the Lauje tribe, I follow God’s call and go.
I’m sitting in a tribal home, watching a cockroach the size of my hand climb across the kitchen wall when I realize: I can see myself doing this. I can see myself living in a tribe and translating the Bible.
I text my mom when I get back into cell service.
I’m pretty sure I freak her out.
March 2016: Rancho Bernardo Community Presbyterian Church
I’m sitting in a Community Bible Study, listening to a lecture. I’m tired, so I’ve decided to draw while listening.
“Do you know your place in the kingdom of God?” the speaker asks.
Do I? I wonder. God, what is my place in your kingdom?
I have made you to be a light.
I know it’s a verse, so I google it on my phone. It’s from Acts 13:47, quoting Isaiah 49:6. I spend the rest of the lecture responding via art. Four years later, I will use this picture to announce my intentions to go on the World Race.
I now know I am called to be a missionary. Not just to travel, or to help people grow in America, but to do it on an international scale.
I text my best friend as soon as I get out of study: I’m going to be a missionary!
Well, duh, she writes back. I could have told you that years ago.
January 2018: Prachuap Khiri-Khan, Thailand
I am in Thailand with my church. We will run childcare for a Workers’ conference, but none of the families have arrived yet, so we pile into a fifteen passenger van for a bit of tourism. I am sitting in the back, staring out the window as rice paddy after rice paddy flies by.
Suddenly, a heavy sense of knowing settles over me. You are exactly where I want you to be. This is what I have for your life.
I know that my departure as a missionary will be imminent. Not in five years, or even two, but as soon as possible.
September 2018: San Diego, CA
I announce my decision to quit my job and live out of a backpack for 11 months.
But why the Race? You may be wondering. What is Expedition?
When I first heard of the World Race, I didn’t want to go. God warmed my heart through multiple friends launching, and finally my own sister in August 2017. When I saw a race focused on the 10/40 window, I knew that was the Race for me.
I want to see the persecuted church.
I still don’t know where I am called permanently. Maybe going to 11 different countries will help me cement my calling to a specific place. Maybe I’ll make connections that will lead to more missions opportunities. Maybe I’ll apply what I learn on the race to a life in America. Maybe I’ll meet someone who I will spend my life with, and maybe I won’t. Maybe I’ll go be an international teacher in a completely unrelated country. Or maybe I’ll quit teaching and write YA novels for a living.
I can’t see the path. But I do know that this is the next step.
I think it’s important to say that I’m still not sure. In day to day life, I often question whether the calling I feel really exists. Maybe I’ll end up living in America, I’ll think. Maybe I’m trying to escape.
But when I really examine my heart, I find a deeper, abiding truth and all-encompassing purpose governing my life: I want as many people as possible to experience the truth and freedom I have found in Jesus. And that may sound like Christian-ese or a nice sentiment from a goody-two-shoes who hasn’t experienced real life, but trust me, it’s not.
Pain defines us, because it comes on the heels of our choices. Sometimes it is a result of our choices, and sometimes we must make a choice because of pain we’ve experienced. Pain illumines who we are as people, and there comes a moment during every tragedy when we must make a choice about what kind of person we want to be, and what we want to believe. I would not be here today without Jesus, and despite all the pain and the waves that have come in my life, this deep, abiding call has been there all along.
Tragedy has not crushed it; rather, God has used tragedy to call it forth.
“It is too small a thing for you to be my servant to restore the tribes of Jacob and bring back those of Israel I have kept. I will also make you a light for the Gentiles, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.” ~Isaiah 49:6
Would you join me in praying this verse over my trip? Lord, make my life a light for the Gentiles, that your salvation might reach the ends of the earth.
