Back to the Beginning

I sat down to write tonight and had an overwhelming urging to look back at some of my older posts. I decided to start at the beginning and chuckled at myself at the first paragraph of my first ever blog post.

When I was a little girl living in a small Alabama town, I dreamed of someday leaving that existence to become a missionary doctor. I wanted to go to Africa to heal and save people. It was such a grand yet simple childhood dream, but it’s all I ever wanted and it’s all I ever talked about. It was my destiny and I knew this because God told me this was His plan for me. I had the grades and I had the faith. Why would I have ever thought this would not be my future?

I love that this was the item I chose to share with the world as I started what would become my blogging mission.

As Gil and I plan and raise funds for our first ever mission trip abroad, I can’t help but think back to the innocence and naivete in that dream.  I never had any doubt that God was telling me to do His work and spread His message. Life got in the way, as it tends to do, and I forgot He placed a mission in my heart. I’m so grateful to have found Him again and that for a few years now, He’s been recharging and refilling my heart with an unquenchable desire to tell anyone who will listen about His love, mercy, and grace.

Aspects of my younger self’s dreams have changed, but the overall picture is the same. I’ve learned my mission work does not have to be limited to some far away land to be meaningful and and impactful. I can simply show others in my everyday, ordinary life. If I can demonstrate love and mercy in the same way God grants it, I will have fulfilled that youthful dream in the smallest of ways.