Surrounded

My life is not what I pictured.

We serve a God who is strategic and purposeful in all that He does. I am grateful for that. 

Right now I live in a melting pot of a city. People come from all over the world to work and visit the tourist capitol of the world. Coming from a small-ish town in southwest Louisiana, I have never encountered such diversity in every aspect. I'm surrounded by people who don't think like me. They don't look like me or believe the same things. We have differences across the board from accents to political beliefs.

To be quite honest, that used to scare me. Differences scared me. For the most part, everyone I grew up with looked and acted and believed the same things. It wasn't until I moved away that I was able to grasp more of what it meant to truly be a light in darkness and to be the hands and feet of Jesus. 

You're always taught that in youth group, you know? Like how to share the gospel with an atheist and what to do when someone asks about Jesus. I got closer in college, but I was still in the southern bubble of Christianity with discipleship as my main focus. My eyes weren't opened until I was given the mission field that is Orlando, Florida. It's here where I finally had the opportunity to live my faith outside the safety of my comfort zone. It's here where I learned a relationship with God does not have to look exactly like my own.

I think we automatically as humans gravitate toward people who maybe look, think, and feel like we do. We are a species that has perfected the art of finding similarities or things in common to revolve our lives around. We are looking for places to belong. 

It's an interesting process to restructure your mind from the things you always grew up believing or at least were comfortable with. 

I'm doing life these days with a lot of people that don't know Jesus. The more I get to know these people, the more I love them. The more God gives me His heart for them. There is a greater, living Hope for these people, and who will do the hard work of loving them well? Who will not just shove the Gospel in their face and leave, but stay for the long haul and walk them Home? 

The older I get, the less I want to be surrounded by people who are exactly like me. What kind of life is this? I don't think I could live anywhere without the diversity that Orlando has brought me. I don't want what is safe or comfortable anymore. I don't believe that's the life that Jesus led or the life that He calls us to. He has more for me, for us, than a perfectly cookie cutter Sunday school life. And this is not the life I have always dreamed of for the longest time... I don't want that anymore. 

If I could go back in time and tell my younger, more naive self something, I would tell her not to be afraid. The growing pains of re-structuring your mind to love as Jesus does is beautiful and uncomfortable, but this is the good work that matters. This is work that is slow, but worthy. It is getting your hands dirty and wrestling with hard things you may not have all the answers for. This means hard conversations and not always agreeing. It is learning how to love people who are different from you without expectations; burdened only by the desire that they would know the kindness the Lord has so graciously shown you.

My senior year of college, I was afraid of leaving the ministry I had poured four years of my life into. It was a community I called home. I was taken care of and valued there. I still miss it, but I know that it's not my season anymore. God didn't spend all those years prepping me to be tucked away into the safety of a homogenous bubble. Those years were only a foundation; a launch into a world that needs more than just a Bible study on Tuesday night. 

I am thankful to be in a season of life where I know I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be. I believe I've always had exactly what I've needed at any given point in my life, but I've never felt the certainty like I do now. My college ministry pastor always told us if we didn't know what to do with our lives, just to go where there was a need. The first time I heard that, my thoughts instantly went to Disney. And what do you know, the Lord made a way for me to come back. That thought is now being fulfilled... I can't wait to see how much more the good work that He has started will be brought to completion.