I am goin' to Botswana!

A Dream Deferred...

Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart.
Psalm 37:4

Over 50 years ago, Langston Hughes asked, "What happens to a dream deferred?" He gave several somewhat undesirable options. I have one to add to his list - sometimes God takes your deferred dream and turns it into a dream you never imagined would come true. And He brings the dream to life in ways you never envisioned.

When I was a little girl, we had a program at church called Mission Friends. Every week we would sit around the little table and learn about missionaries serving God. There were Home Missionaries who were working in North America, and Foreign Missionaries who were serving God in far-away and sometimes very exotic places. I used to sit in that seat and dream of being a missionary. I pictured myself teaching a room full of Chinese children how to speak English and then telling them of the love of Jesus. I realize now that my particular vision as a child was somewhat simplistic, maybe even a little snobby (everyone in the whole world wants to speak English, right?). But the seed had been planted. Also, unbeknown to me, my mom had been praying about the same thing. She felt that I had been called to missions as well, and she had already dedicated my life to God for Him to use however He chose.

But little girls grow up into teenagers who are capable of making their own, and sometimes stupid, decisions. As my love for self grew by leaps and bounds, my heart for others began shrinking. I genuinely loved going to church, but mostly because of the friends (and boys!) that I had there. I was very involved in my youth group, but my involvement with my Creator was extremely shallow- "a mile wide and an inch deep" as some say. College was more of the same, but I did have moments where I longed for something more, something I knew only God could provide. It was during one such moment that God clearly told me I would be going to serve Him in Africa. I prayed about it, and I really felt that I would be going to Kenya. I even sent away for the application packet from the International Mission Board. As I was filling out this application, all of these doubts began to creep into my mind. There were very personal questions on there that I felt ashamed to answer truthfully. So I set aside the application and tried to forget about it. In the meantime, I went back to my old ways of doing things and before long Africa was a distant memory...

Well, it was a distant memory for me, but not for God. You see, we may forget, or not even know, the purpose God has for our lives, but He never forgets. He never forgets! God has done a tremendous amount of work in my life between the end of college and now. Too much to tell here, but know that He was working in my life and in the lives of others to bring about one amazing plan for my life. He brought Tim and me to a church that truly has a heart to "go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation." God also used my bad choices and experiences to bring me into a true relationship with Him, and by doing so He has used all that icky stuff to bring glory to His name. I began working at a local pregnancy resource center where I was part of a team that shared a message of purity and abstinence until marriage with local middle and high school students. And I would think how awesome it would be to take this message to people on a continent that has been absolutely devastated by HIV and AIDS. Well guess what? I am going! Not to Kenya, but to Botswana. This small country just north of South Africa has some of the highest infection rates of HIV and AIDS on the continent of Africa. And I will be presenting with a team to middle and high-school aged kids. We will be sharing the messages of purity and truth, but most importantly we will be sharing love.

I never could have imagined that God would bring this dream to life in such a way. You know that Psalm that says, "Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart." (Psalm 37:4) Well, I think a lot of the time we read that to mean that if we are delighting in God, then He will give us the things that we want. But I believe it means that when we truly find our happiness in God, then He will place dreams and desires and longings in our heart that can only come from Him. Yes, my dream was deferred for quite some time. But it is coming true in God's perfect timing, and I wouldn't want it any other way.


Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us, to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.
Ephesians 3:20-21