Coming Home...

Dear Family…

This is my life:

Mike wrote me an email not too long ago. In it he said, “Any vision or ministry you attempt has to first die if it’s going to succeed. It has to die so that God (and God alone) can resurrect the vision according to His purposes and His shaping. So if it feels like your vision is dying…it means that God is getting you ready to lay down your plans and listen to what He’s got in store.”

As if that wasn’t thought provoking enough, I was talking to Amy a few days later, telling her how, for the first time in my life, I’m just absolutely unsure about what to do with myself. I have no direction for my life. The future is blank. I’m at an end, completely, of my own resources. She laughed, “God has had to bring you through a lot to accomplish that.”

And I think she’s right. They’re both right. I have nothing left to give; there is nothing I can do. I can’t speak Korean, I can’t evangelize, I can’t disciple, I don’t even have the energy to walk through a normal day without becoming exhausted, for goodness sake!

So yesterday I decided that I’m done. I will go home in March and attempt to live my life day by day loving people as best I can. God knows that my heart is still willing – if He wants me to go to China, fine. If He wants me to stay here, fine. But I am done trying to make it happen. I don’t even know what live I hope to have, but I do know what life I don’t want: a life lived based upon my own resources and ingenuity. I can’t do it any longer.

Yesterday was a sad day to walk through. Not sad in a bad way, exactly, just sad in a “good-bye” sort of way. I cried for a little while in the morning, while I was praying, because giving this – my vision for NK – up is like giving a part of myself up. Missions is my identity; it has been since I can remember. I’ve always had a direction, I’ve always known what I was going to do and who I was going to be. And now … I have nothing.

It’s hard, too, because I’ve given so much for this. These last three years have been such arduous ones, bought with tears and sweat. But I’ve given them to God. He may use them someday, if He wants to. But I never will. I lived them because I loved God, and now I leave them for the same reason. I still study Korean, because this is where I am, but I no longer plan on using it, so a great pressure is removed. And when I return to America in two months, I will leave things wrapped up here, because I don’t plan on coming back. If this isn’t pleasing to God, if this is merely giving up when He wants me to press forward – well, my life is His. I trust Him to keep me on the right path.

I don’t know how I’ll explain all this to family and church, but I care very little how they respond. I’m done trying to meet other people’s expectations. I’m done trying to meet my own expectations. From today, the only One Whom I will attempt to satisfy is Christ. If He is pleased with my life, I will be content.

So that’s my story. I’m very sad, and the smallest things make me cry…I’m crying while I write this. But I have so much peace. I really believe that this is where God has been bring me, all this time: to an end of myself and a beginning of Him.

I love you, and I wish that one of you could be here with me right now…