As a little girl I loved reading books about those living on the MISSION FIELD and I just determined in my mind that that is what I would spend my life doing. I grew up in small town MN, just a farm girl and our trips consisted of camping in Northern MN and Canada. I was not exposed to people groups or other nations, I did not grow up in a family that talked about those things and yet the Lord wooed my heart from the time I could remember. My first mission experience was heading off to YWAM after my third year of college. I was the last of my closest highschool friends (8 to be exact) to join the YWAM family due to the fact my parents just didn't want me to go. BUT...they finally said "yes" and I couldn't pack fast enough. Every one of my friends (mostly two at a time) chose a base in Maui, Hawaii to attend the Discipleship Training part of YWAM with their outreaches traveling to places like Fiji and the Phillipines. I searched schools that would take me to the inner city for outreaches, I REALLY wanted to work in the Red Light Districts so I chose to do my DTS at The Greater New York base. After 3 months working on the streets of Elizabeth NJ and the NY burros we headed off to Germany and then England to work YES!!!!! In the Red Light Districts!!!!!!! We worked mainly at night (and slept during the day) with prostitutes, transvestites, run aways and AIDS victims. My heart broke often as we watched the girls (and guys) stand on street corners, dance in windows as men picked out who they "wanted" and even stood outside the doors of establishments and cried out to the Lord for the young girls (3-8 yr olds) we saw being taken in by men after their prostitute mothers "sold" them to them for profit. We ran from Pimps, spent afternoons with angry, homeless "anti-government" skin heads who lived in a park and witnessed in pubs to the local patrons. My parents STILL don't know all we did and that is a good thing :) (its ok moms to NOT know everything your kids have done)
During the time I was in YWAM I was dating Mark and soon after I returned home we got engaged with every intention of heading off the mission field once we were married. An almost immediate pregnany and an annoucement from Mark that he couldn't shake the feeling that he was called to law school brought my "missionary" plans to a halt. I STUCK my heels in the ground for MONTHS as I was bound and determined to NOT follow the American Dream of a house with a white picket fence in suburbia, the wife of a "professional"....no offense to any one out there that had that dream but to me it sounded boring, stifling and un-fulfilling. Mark begged me to just seek the Lord and if he told me that I had heard from the Lord that was NOT what we were to do he would drop it for good (15 years later I used that same line when I asked him to pray about adopting). Funny, how when we ask the Lord exactly what HIS will is He shows us. SO....we packed up our one year old, moved to Tulsa and Mark began law school at night while he worked full time during the day. It took him 3.5 years (pretty good for working full time) and two babies later we moved back to Texas with a law degree in hand and a job as an Assistant District Attorney, three kids and debt. We bought that house and although I LOVED being a stay at home mom and was homeschooling my kids I felt I was missing out on SOMETHING. I continued to wait for the "call" to come for the mission field and Mark and I prayed for direction and kept hearts willing to pick up and move as soon as the "go" came. We began taking our kids on several short term missions trips (Kailee was 4 on her first trip) and I find that more fulfilling and adventurous than ANY family vacation we have ever taken. We were also super involved in church, leading, Mark was asked to be an elder, I was volunteering at the Pregnancy Care Center and life was moving along. 6.5 years ago we began our adoption journey and my heart continued to ache for the orphans of the world and their birth families, young women many times who choose life over abortion and I knew that God was stirring something new in me....and this was where it got sticky....because you see....we most of the time have OUR dream in mind it FITS IN THE BOX we see it in....and, oh what a dangerous place this puts us in because GOD doesn't FIT IN OUR BOX....and so He patiently waits until we lay down ALL of our AGENDA and are willing to THINK OUTSIDE of the box....
.....to be continued....