Making Ripples

Posted on June 16, 2015

“I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples.”

Mother Teresa

This is my new job. This picture was posted a week or so ago on Facebook and I downloaded it and made it my screensaver to remind me. This is my new job. Not charts of finances, not folders full of passports and visas, not lists of airline itineraries. Real. Live. People. All over Eastern and Central Europe. Sharing the good news of God’s love with young people who have never heard.

Makes me smile. Take a long look at them. There are missionaries-to-be in this group. There are pastors and teachers and youth leaders. The ripples God creates with their lives will go on into eternity, and we get to be a part of helping that happen.

Have you been with me on this journey since the beginning? When I puzzled over losing a career in medicine and entered into the quietness of God on the Navajo Nation? When I learned to butcher sheep and make fry bread and love sunsets over the desert? I would have never guessed that my path would (or even could) lead to here.

Sometimes when it’s just me and God, I wonder about these things. I wonder over all the hours I spent asking God for other things- for a husband and a family- for security and safety- for health in my life and in my family. I think of all that has not been given. The heartbreaks and disappointments. I think of health and healing that didn’t come in my family. Of loss. I think of my quiet job- counting chromosomes each day- and how I had determined in my mind to do this job for my whole career. How I loved it.

But here I am.

As I was able to watch God move among these young lives during Intern Training week, I caught myself whispering prayers of thanks to Him. Thanks for giving me something so unexpected. Thanks for entrusting this job to me, thanks for Your grace in giving me what I needed- not always what I wanted.

“You’ve been so good to me….so gracious and patient and kind”, I whispered to Him over and over.

I wonder at what He will bring in the future. I want to stay close and listen so that I go exactly where He needs me to be.

I’m just beginning the process of streamlining the entire intern process. I’m praying and writing down thoughts and ideas. I’m staring at this photo of all these young lives and imagining it twice this size. Ten times this size. I’m dreaming and hoping and asking God to direct me as I plan and process.

I’m also thanking Him for you.

The only way that I can wake up in the morning and dedicate each day to this is because so many of you are making it possible financially. The only way I have the strength to stand in the midst of all the change and loss this year has brought, is because God has answered your prayers for me.

I thank Him for you all the time. I’m so glad we get to do this together!

“Show me your ways, Lord teach me your paths.

Guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my Savior,

and my hope is in you all day long.”

Psalm 25:4-5