When I was brand new to this community, there were many different ideas and ways of doing things to adapt to. Having pledged -like the Biblical Ruth- to make his people my people, I 'swallowed' everything that came down the pike. When a mature lady stated in Sunday School that one should never volunteer to serve on the mission field because it's promoting yourself and often doesn't turn out well, causing problems for the mission board- that instead one should always wait to be noticed/called, I believed that was this church's concept [instead of an individual's opinion] and embraced it as truth. I obediently waited for someone to notice our suitability to serve and got on with life. We were busy having a family and trying to get established in business.
Years passed.
At some point I became interested in a book rack ministry. I heard the best couples for that particular work are a man who enjoys driving and a wife who loves to read books. Surely someone would notice our suitability for that position and submit our name. But it never happened. Meanwhile we were busy researching little-known disorders and trying to figure out the special needs parenting world. It really would not have been in the best interest of our family at that point to disrupt & transplant anyway.
More years passed.
There was that one occasion where we did get a phone call. It came out of the clear blue and left us reeling for a moment. The position was a good fit, the location was great (being roughly midway between our extended families) and the influence on our children would have been a good thing, but alas we were 2 days away from digging the foundation for our major home addition project. We couldn't leave our contractor in the lurch. (Learning we were way down on the list of candidates didn't exactly make us feel vital so it was easy to say no right away.)
In more recent years, it has emerged that our children love babies and little people. My dream refreshed itself into possibly serving with an organization that takes care of 'prison babies'. I have my doubts about my suitability for the position but my youth would thrive as a foster family there. We even briefly contemplated becoming foster parents in our community here but decided against it for several reasons.
Meanwhile our closest circle of friends from church have all been called to missions or ministry. I feel like the odd man out when we're together. There is that cliche that "someone has to stay home and earn money to support those in missions" but I never much cared for that little pat-on-the-head.
So here we are... still sitting at home. Still waiting. But along the way I have discovered the dream takes two; marriage is a partnership so it's not enough for me to dream of doing missions work. If the man of the house is quite content to be a missionary supporter instead of the missionary, where does that leave me? Can I be content to support him in this too?
Furthermore I am getting the sneaking suspicion that the call might come about the time grandbabies start arriving and I won't want to leave them. Hey, I've been training my whole life to be grandma!
And then there is the sobering fact that I now have 2 children who are older than I was when I so maturely (ha!) marched off to VS eg. my children are capable of getting the missions experience without me.
And then the other day this quote showed up in my FaceBook wall....
Much pondering going on here. How much of my dream is actually looking for something magical to happen instead of a real desire to be Jesus' hands & feet? I believe I need to rethink the whole dream.
PS. Lest you falsely believe I am a deep, spiritual thinker, I have a confession to make- the title of this post does not come from Martin Luther's famous speech or any such thing. It was inspired by the song in the Disney movie Tangled. They say there is a child inside of all of us, and the kid in me loves certain Disney kid movies.
So, maybe someday I will leave my "tower", maybe not.
