This is you. I was sitting in a small dorm-like hotel room with my Bible in my lap and German chatter in the background and looked up to see a former youth leader looking at me with a slight smile. “This is you”
I had long been longing to spend an extended period of time in another culture, perhaps as part of a study abroad or a volunteer program. I knew I would be working full time in the ministry eventually, but I figured that would be after marriage, so I had quite some time to worry about that. In Vienna, however, the international church that we were helping to build a second building for had quite a few American helpers, many young and using their time of being unattached to the fullest, serving full time in a culture so different than their own. The church is pastored by an American missionary, proving it is possible to raise a family in another land, if that is what God wants me to do. He hasn’t told me yet, and honestly it probably won’t come clear for quite some time, but that’s ok. I can wait. I could make plans all I want and everything will still end up completely different than expected and so much better. I had absolutely no idea senior year what I would be doing the following fall, but working in a call center was completely out of the question- never even considered, it just never came up and I probably would have refused if God gave me more than 30 seconds to decide once it was offered by the temp agency I wandered into about a week after graduating.
Yet God knows where He wants me and little by little He reveals that plan- just enough so I know the next step that He’s asked me to take. On the plane ride home from Vienna I knew that if I said yes, if I surrendered my plans, my work, and my future in whole, it would be so much more rewarding than working my way up the corporate ladder as I had originally entertained. I had said my life was all His before, and I really did mean it, but I knew if that was really to be the case, I needed to set aside my own agenda and simply hold on tight because things were going to start happening fast. Sure enough, once home, God led me to search and allowed me to find AIM’s site almost immediately. He encouraged me to apply and sure enough, like He had warned, the acceptance process passed by very quickly and all along He gently keeps me going, saying that it’s ok and this is where He wants me. I passed up an opportunity to continue working, but I can finish school (at least an AA) before I go. I may argue that I don’t like telephones, that I’m not fluent enough to work in a call center, but He showed me where He wanted me and a year and a half later He’s gently tearing me away from it with the confidence and resources needed to reach a new horizon.
