I received my latest monthly statement from AGWM and between the new monthly pledges I've raised and the people still supporting me (a couple have stopped support), I'm at $405 in monthly pledges. That's only about $2,200 left to raise! I know God can do this by the end of the year, my goal departure time. (Every time I talk about this departure time, I have to add that I wanted to spend Christmas in Romania, but my children's pastor told me no. :) Love you, friend!) My last blog post I talked about the lies the enemy has been telling me, about no one believing in me or wanting to support me. God has totally blown those lies out of the water; everyone I talk to is supportive and loving and encouraging. I'm not sure I've ever felt this much love in my life. The other night I got to just sit down and fellowship and connect with one of my partners in such a powerful way. We shared life stories, talked, laughed and communed like we were blood relatives. In a way, I guess all members of my faith family are my blood relatives - we're family by the blood of Jesus. That's a nice thought. My church family really is family to me. I wasn't raised around my extended family. I'm a Marine Corps brat. I had already moved about thirteen times when I graduated high school. I'd never lived anywhere more than three years. When I came to Oklahoma, I hadn't attended church in about two years. I started going to Crossroads on September 2nd of 2007 (fun fact, the first weekend in September is my "frienniversary" with my bestie) and except for the fact that the whole worship team and orchestra were dressed in black and made me think of a funeral I loved it pretty much immediately. I've never gone anywhere else since that first Sunday of the month (which, I later found out, was why everyone on stage was dressed in black - outfits were color coordinated by which Sunday of the month it was). In the six years since I've been at Crossroads, it has always been my church, and has since become my family. I don't think I've truly realized, though, until this final season of fundraising, that my church family takes as much ownership of me as I do of them. They love me as much, if not more, than I love them. I don't really know why that surprises me. It's not like I had some unhappy childhood where I was unloved and unwanted, but for some reason, I cannot fully comprehend being loved and appreciated and supported by my church family. It's so strange for me to think that as much as I love and invest in my church, my faith family members want to love and invest in me. For whatever reason, I don't expect that. I expect to have to do things on my own, I seem to expect to be rejected, rebuffed, refused, and whatever other re- words fall into that same category in the thesaurus. Instead, my faith family is just wrapping me up in this huge hug and saying, we love you, we believe in you, we see God moving in your life, we are excited for you, you don't have to try to convince us to support you - we support you, we're going to send you even though we're going to miss you, you're valued and appreciated and most of all LOVED.
Whoa.
That's some pretty powerful stuff to someone who hasn't been able to shake the feeling that the only one who really believes in her is God.
It's been four years since God first put Touched Romania on my heart and called me to this mission field. For the first time in a long time, I'm daring to let myself dream of the day when I will be there, fulfilling His calling on my life. Yes, I've held onto the dream all this time and God certainly hasn't let go of my heart, but it's been a long time since I let myself dream.
I looked up plane tickets to Bucharest the other day. I imagined boarding the plan, what I'm going to pack, how long of a layover I would have, which airline I wanted to take (Hint: it's not going to be Turkish Airlines with a layover in Istanbul. Methinks their flights are cheap for a reason. I'm leaning towards British Airlines with a layover in Heathrow so I can hub out of the same airport my dad did whenever he went to the Middle East for deployments. He loved the Heathrow airport. Well, probably liked it a lot, maybe not loved, given all the circumstances. A layover is still a layover, after all.), what time I would leave, what time I would arrive, how jet lagged I would be. I actually got a little emotional over the whole thing. I hadn't let myself really think about being in Romania for a long time. Today, I looked up apartments in Bucharest. I had no idea what was a good location or which one was closest to Touched Romania, but I looked and planned, and thought about rent coming out of my budget, and I dreamed. I thought about getting to the maternal center every day and walking through the streets and taking the bus and never taking a Romanian taxi again because that was just scary and what was considered downtown was it by the food market I went to before where I had to buy a denim skirt because I'd managed to leave my pants in Vienna and shown up for three days in Romania with a dress and a top? (Yeah, there's a funny story. Set my jeans aside to pack 'em. Didn't pack 'em. Had to buy a skirt in a place that also sold produce and meat and I still have the skirt and it was just a hilarious experience all around.) I keep thinking about how I'm going to get my comic books to Romania and how am I going to convince my mother to go to my comic book store and pick up new issues for me and ship them to me. (Don't ask. Just know that I am like a strange little Sheldon from Big Bang Theory and move on.) It felt so good to dream. To let myself really believe in the reality of this again. I'm going to be there, I'm going to hold babies and love on them and pray over them and support and encourage and love on teen moms and their babies and be exactly where God wants me to be. When I wake up every day it won't be to go to work and push paper and wait for the weekend where I get to be at the church and minister to kids and fellowship with my family, I will wake up and ministry will be my job, I will be doing what I love and loving what I do and there won't be any such thing as horrible Mondays or longing for the weekend because I'm finally going to be where I'm supposed to be and there's not going to be this whole "job" thing getting in the way of serving because all I have to do is serve. I love this. I can't wait to be there. I can't wait to be on that plane. (Going through London, not Istanbul.)
