Musings of A Military Wife (& Mama Moments)

So I had gone to Uganda instead of college to help bring 26 Ugandans across the ocean. I was then touring with the Ugandan Kids Choir back in the United States. For eight weeks I advocated sponsorship. It was a special time.  But something else was happening in my heart. It was very confusing. Cute-guy-from-AWANA was really getting my attention. One of my friends had knowingly told me months prior “within the year, you two will be together.”  I disagreed with her, and I meant it. I was concerned. I liked him, and he was starting to understand that fact. However, I knew two basic things: I couldn’t be with him, and I couldn’t hurt him. The former was making the latter hard not to accomplish. So I decided not to go to the young adults group, where I knew he would be. He was the kind of guy who wouldn’t put up with games, and I had learned enough of myself to know I needed to stop leading him on.  I called my dad. I’ll never forget that phone call. Out of no...

It was a ten year dream, and I had given it up. I wanted to study .  It was the one thing I knew how to do and I had placed so much hope in finally going to college after working and working for it. But while my friends moved to college,   studied, hung out, and advanced their lives, I sat at home, bewildered about my purpose. It had seemed pretty clear: I was to be a missionary nurse, and to be a nurse I needed my degree. What was God doing? For a couple of months I puttered along: I became an AWANA leader for older elementary school students, I wrote a little, spent some time with my family, worked out a bit, and began to trust the Lord and to be content, despite the disappointment. And then one day, it happened. During my senior year, I had attended a meeting designed to create a team that would facilitate the coming of an African childrens’ choir hailing from an orphanage our church supported. Deeply interested, I looked over the volunteer opportunities and f...

I’m not a child anymore. Tomorrow I am twenty-one. The beginning of so many things, and the end of many. Bittersweet. Profound. I am not a child anymore, yet how much I have yet to learn. Twenty. I went on a journey of discovering myself: my gifts, my love, my humanity, my calling. I did not set out to do so, but journeys always reveal what we least expect. I finished my first year of college, a dream that had died in my heart the year before. I let go of perfection and learned how to fail. I traveled across the ocean, encountered a world where pain is prevalent and spiritual darkness oppresses the masses. Alone in my room, I would write. I wrote the stories of the people I met. I cried for them. I cried. I understood. I came back home, struggled to understand the emotions and the pain that made no sense. I became part of a world where waking up became the part of the day I dreaded the most. I fought against my calling. I traveled across my country. I fel...