Isn’t it funny, looking back, how the road of life, while tree-lined and
glorious in all its splendor and promise, is also littered with detours?
Hopes that seemed perfectly dreamlike at sixteen fade around the edges,
distorting the picture. Goals that crystallized in college grow salty and you
begin to realize: I need to stop and examine the map a bit more closely.
My story is a happy, contented one, but one of returning. One of stopping
to look at the map.
In high school, I loved writing, but seemed to only pursue it in moments of
desperation, such as examining the price of my college-of-choice and
having to haul out a gallon of smelling salts just to find my next breath. So,
out of desperation, I entered and won a local writing contest. The prize,
$1,000, was quickly turned over to said college and my beloved, but very
expensive, adventure began.
Entering college meant making choices—those big “lifetime” sort of
choices. Maybe it was my upbringing or the smallness of my worldview at
that time, but it seemed to me that there were, perhaps, only a handful of
jobs available to women—or at least only a handful of “sensible” careers:
nursing, law, ministry, and education. Nobody talked—at least to me—
about packaging engineers or graphic design or journalism or computers.
And I can promise you that nobody talked about becoming a writer.
And so I didn’t.
Instead, I wholeheartedly pursued a degree in education, traveling abroad
to travel and teach English in Peru for a summer. It was a life-changing and
soul-defining time, marked by brown eyes and tiny brown fingers reaching
out for my own—a detour that sent ripples crashing into the walls of my
heart. I’m so thankful that God chose to weave my story together with
others in the developing world at a relatively young age; it continues to
shape me even today.
I returned home to get married and go to work in a country classroom. I
loved those early months of life together, pooling money for bills and gas
and roast beef dinners on paydays. But by the time we moved into our first
home, the shoots of a new story were pushing their way through the soft
earth of my mind, and I returned to the task of committing words to paper
and dreaming of what they might become.
My most cherished detour, of course, was the one that turned my heart
inside-out and wrung me dry, love dripping from hands and mouth: the
births of each of my children. Raising them has been a high calling and one
that I embrace with joy and purpose. I could not feel more lucky to be their
mom and am thankful beyond measure that God placed each of them in
our care.
During the early days of mothering, when the four walls of my home
comprised my entire world, a dear friend and I began to grapple with the
notion of serving beyond the fixed boundaries of geography. Now a stay-athome mom, she and I worked together on a big dream—one we hardly
dared to dream: beginning a non-profit that would reach out and extend
love to orphaned and vulnerable children affected by HIV/AIDS.
We focused on Africa and in 2004 traveled with my husband to Zambia
where our lives cracked open and bled for the children we met. It is
impossible to walk away unchanged when confronted by utter poverty
filtered with pure joy. I have never heard worship like I did in that dusty
African church. And I have never left a place with such a feeling of despair
and hopelessness intersecting with a promise to act on another’s behalf.
This trip was a catalyst, of sorts, for the next five years: raising money and
helping childcare homes purchase formula, diapers, pay for new furniture,
keep the homes’ vehicle running and insured. Projects mounted and we
still stand in awe of the work that God gave us to do and the people He
placed in our paths. I pray He was glorified and honored by our efforts to
send love across the ocean. I know it changed me.
So two more years and many detours later, I found myself at my computer
wanting to share some of these things and not knowing exactly how to do
it. After years of ignoring the nudges of a friend to start a blog, I finally quit
protesting and started to write. Then one day, I opened an email that would
send me in a completely new and wonderful direction: I was asked to
ghostwrite a book.
The experience was surreal at the time, and even now I wonder if it really
was me—if those months truly are part of my history. Because the book
was someone else’s, I felt like a surrogate mother of sorts, working and
writing and researching for weeks, only to finish the project and happily
turn it over to another so she could shine. It was an opportunity of a
lifetime, and one for which I remain entirely grateful.
And so here we are now a year after completing that book. I am still
writing, still hoping for some clear road signs, but still consulting my road
map.
Is this how God would have me use my time? Is this the beginning of a new
future? I suppose only time will tell. You never know what’s around the
next bend, the next fork in the road. But for now, I’m glad you’re along for
the ride.