The Waiting Game: A Ramble?

I want you to think about the thing you love most to do.
The thing you would make time for in your schedule, cancel other plans for, and may make you forget things like sleep and (dare I say it?) food exist.

Now, I want you to think of the thing you are the best at.
Not in comparison with other people. The one thing that you can say "Hey, I'm ok at racquetball, but I'm a boss when it comes to _____." If you're that guy playing Call Of Duty for six-hours a day but has sub-par averages, then you cannot fill that blank with Call of Duty. If you're a beast at making Mac N Cheese, and you are legitimately good at it, put Mac N Cheese in that blank. I want you to think long and hard about this question before you fill in the blank.

The two things you've named above may be very different. They might be the same thing. However, are you willing to commit the rest of your life to doing one of both of those things till, say, your head no longer grows hair, you have wrinkles all around your mouth and you die? If you chose food or sleep for either of them, you're cheating. I could eat hummus and pizza till the Rapture happens, but you also need food to survive. If alcohol was your answer, I highly recommend you check yourself into a program that can help you safely enjoy alcohol. Or that death thing may happen sooner than you want it to.

What are you willing to do all day, every day, for the rest of your life? A few of you twentysomethings reading this blog might be freaking out right now. "The rest of my life?!?! I don't even know if I'll be in the same major next week!!!" said the dude with a YOLO tattoo.
It's a big question. An important question. Lots of people don't know the answer. Sometimes that answer is scary. If you don't know your answer, THAT'S OK.

If you answered all three of these, I'm so glad you have patience and are willing to be challenged in an ever so strange way.

If you answered all three of these in under five minutes, not only are you a faster reader than I am, but you've got something very special.

My answer for all three of these is linguistics. (surprise!) Specifically, field linguistics and language development. How that will practically look (i.e. translation, literacy, survey) I'm not sure. But, I believe in my heart of hearts that I was born to use linguistics to reach people for Christ.

This is what is more commonly known as a Calling. Most people spend an usually large proportion of their lives trying to figure out what their calling is and the other portion of their lives figuring out how to execute it. My problem is not finding this calling, although that stage was rough, but actually getting to the point where I can do said calling. I'm thankful for knowing what my calling is. I had a conversation with a coworker at Vector where I was expressing my great desire to go overseas ASAP when he said, "At least you know what your calling is." He then proceeded to look distantly with a 'you have something that seems impossible for me' expression.

I know what I want to do. But can I ever get there? As the days roll into weeks and weeks into multiple months, I feel like I'll never be where I want to be. What ifs start to surface and I pay a visit to the Stewarts' and play Settlers of Catan or a few rounds of Nertz in order to stop freaking out. I'm not sure what's worse: not knowing your calling or not being able to pursue that calling. (yet?) I'm sure this story, like so many others, will have a happy ending. I may be the one speaking at a banquet when I'm seventy-years-old talking about how I became a widow at a young age (not at this rate) because my husband was killed in some sort of guerrilla war against Christians but I stayed on the field anyway and if I can do it, you can too! and dozens of young adults will join the fight to end Bible Poverty.

It's frustrating. In the mean time, in the land between, in my desert, I desire so earnestly to do the work I've been trained for and called to do. And can't. Maybe there's a particular reason I'm being held back. Maybe I'm not ready for the mission field. Maybe my mission field isn't ready for me. Maybe there are people I'm not done ministering to here yet.

Until then, I'm playing the waiting game. While I wait, I'm working two jobs, hopefully going to start a masters degree, leading a Biblestudy (soon), planting a tree (so maybe that's a joke), and letting people know I'm passionate about this work.

I'm just really hoping I don't pull a Moses and wait forty years to be assigned to my duties.

But we'll see.