Seasons of Life

It is that season of life again when everything changes. My friends are all facing major changes in their lives. Some are moving away - many actually, and I wonder again how I got to where I am. I have always been somewhat of a loner. I like my own company well enough, and most of my interests can be perused well enough alone. I never had many friends growing up, never really felt their absence. I was always the one who moved away, and creating a new life absorbed most of my time. There was a time when I would say that my best friends were my books, for through them I peered into the hearts of the authors on a level not often reached in friendships. While my literary friends are still close to my heart, for I learned much from them, now I am surrounded by flesh-and-blood friends.
I'm not sure when it happened. I think though, that it was after I stopped running from God. I've been a follower of Christ for over two decades now, which shows my stupidity in still thinking I can follow my own path when He wants me to do something different. There's a reason old preachers called Him the Hound of Heaven - He always gets His man. I ran for quite a few years from my call. I grew up an MK; when I was 16 and my family had returned to the States, I went on a youth retreat with my church - not exactly my thing, but it sounded like it might be fun. One night the speaker asked all who felt that God was calling them to ministry to come forward. I'm not a "come forward" kind of a person - I don't like alter calls because I feel that the response is too often based on emotion rather than conviction, but that night it felt as if God Himself were standing there saying, "Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?" I felt compelled to answer, and like Isaiah, I said,"Here am I. Send me!"*
Since then I ran from that calling every chance I found. To tell the truth, I was scared, petrified really. After all, who was I to think that God could use ME!? I was no scholar; I possessed no great wisdom or skill to use in His service. I was just me, a third-culture, dyslexic teenager trying to adapt to my culture of origin, fairly unsuccessfully I might add. I was socially irrelevant! What use was I?
When I was about 18 I attended a conference at a seminary in a town near by. The second I set foot on the campus, I knew that this was the place God wanted me to go to school. That very day I picked up an application, yet when it came time to fill it out, my fears rushed in to overwhelm me and drown out God's leading. I thought, "surely there is no way I could stand the workload there - I am dyslexic after all, and I am no writer, and you have to write lots of papers in seminary. There is no way; I will do something else with my life instead." It wasn't like there was nothing I could do. You see, when I was diagnosed with dyslexia as a child, the specialist recommended that I be put in art lessons. It turned out to be something I had a natural propensity for, and soon everyone told me that I should be an artist.
It took quite a few years for me to agree to follow God's leading in my education, and during those years I wandered. It seemed that everything I enjoyed doing lost its flavor; all was tasteless to me in those years. I lost my joy in my art; it became a burden to me until I came to the conclusion that I could never be a full-time artist because it felt like it was destroying me from the inside. Finally I realized that I would never find peace until I did what God wanted me to do and went where He wanted me to go, so I sent in my application, still unsure that I could cut it but sure that I couldn't handle running any longer.
Thus began my time at seminary. From that first semester I began accruing friends at an alarming pace - to me at least! Now I have more friends than I have toes, and I haven't lost any yet (toes that is). In the book of Mark, Jesus says, "no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age."** I have found this true, and I am now surrounded by hundreds of brother and sisters in Christ who care for me and I for them. Now some of them are moving on, following God's call on their lives, and I am the one who must remain behind. I cannot deny that part of me envies them their adventure as I plug-on on this path He has laid before me while another part aches at the loss of their companionship. Yet I know I will never be alone, for the God who accompanied me in my years of wanderings will remain my comfort. Whoever I am, I am His; He will not leave me. I have found joy in life again - and in my art. I know I am where He wants me, and that is the best place to be.

*Isaiah 6:8, **Mark 10:29-30