From the moment we got off the plane in Guatemala City I could
feel that this trip was going to be far more independent than the last two;
that this trip was mine to experience on my own without expectations from anyone
around me. As we drove the three hours from Guatemala City to Chichi I was
alone in my own little world, looking out the window with open eyes,
contemplating what this week would be and listening for whatever God wanted to
tell me, and what He told me was that it was okay to be alone.
As the week progressed that thought became more clearly not
about being alone, but rather about being enough on my own. For the longest
time now I’ve been living under the impression that I would figure out what I wanted
to do with my life after I met my husband and got married, that God’s plan for
me so involved another person that I would not be able to figure it out or do
it by myself. And even though I still believe that it’s in God’s plan for me to
be a wife one day, I very clearly now know that I need to stop thinking as
though there is no other plan than that, because more than anything I can hear
God telling me that I am enough to be used by Him as I am right now on my own.
And it was through that independence and clarity
of God’s voice that I was also able to take hold of the connection to Guatemala
that I so desperately wanted, and the ministry that I served with there. Through
every build, every feeding program, everything we did, heard and saw my eyes
were opened to the heart that God has for that country and the people serving
Him there.
In the end I know in my heart that I want to go back, and
also that I don’t want to go back alone. On coming home I found that my solitary
trip started a fire in the lives of many of my friends as well, that God was
able to use my experience to speak life and truth into scores of people around
me while also clarifying a vision of my own all the more. After one week back in
the reality that is my west Michigan existence, the truth about independence
that God has given me is leading me into a vision, (drum roll please) the
vision that a large part of my purpose in going to Guatemala will be in leading
a team of my own one day, what do you make of that.