When I was a little girl I remember begging Mom to buy a plethora of ballerina books and novels about ballerinas. I was determined to be a dancer. I got my first pair of ballet shoes when I was in grade six. Delighted out of my mind i remember wearing them all over the house weeks before my first ballet lesson. Funny, however, that after a year I felt dejected, disappointed and frustrated that I was not as agile as the other dancers in my class. I knew that this was really not where my heart was, and so I abandoned that dream.
Mesmerized by the Ancient Egyptians, the next stage in my quest to my future was archaeology. I longed to be down in the ancient ruins, digging, translating the long-lost hieroglyphics and submersing myself in the dusty history. I read all the National Geographics I could get my hands on, even branching to the Incas and Mayans, just thirsty to know more. I tried teaching myself to read hieroglyphics and even sent a letter to an older cousin in England who was an archaeologist asking for advice. After finally coming to the sad conclusion that it was going to be a pretty boring and frustrating life being an archaeologist, needing to come up with big money for the digs, I abandoned that dream as well.
Along the road came the realization that I actually cared about people and their rights. In grade eight my humanities teacher introduced to the concept of child slavery and child soldiers all over the world by reading us the book "Iqbal" and telling us all about Free the Children and Invisible Children. My inquiry into child soldiers rocked my foundation as my eyes were opened to the great need in the world and the injustice that was so very prevalent. In my young fourteen-year-old mind, I decided the best way for me to be involved in world justice was to become a lawyer. Little did I comprehend that lawyers have no lives, no time for families and there is a lot of politics and corruption they need to wade through if they want to be honest and upright, especially to do pro bono work. Analyzing careers in Planning 10 swayed my mind far far away from law school.
Still passionate about justice and making a difference in the world, I wanted to use some of my gifts and skills as a potential career. I had always been complimented on my writing and I really enjoyed using my words to express my thoughts and emotions, so I started fantasizing about becoming a writer, even a journalist. Still in Planning 10, the cold, hard facts knocked me flat on my butt. Writers do not have a steady income, they get paid royalties on each book they write, people have to like it for one, and there needs to be very good finance budgeting in this case, which I did not have. I did look into journalism, but the thought of writing something that someone else wanted me to write and not something that was on my own heart did not appeal to me. Writing was officially out of the question...or so I thought.
But before I get too far ahead, I still had this huge heart to make a difference in the world, and I was convinced that I would find a career in which this would be fleshed out. I was tired of the myriad of relief organizations offering continual aid, aid that would be continued to be given as long as there was still need of aid. Something in me was convinced that if there was no injustice, there would be no need for aid. I wanted a career in which I would be part of eradicating and healing the wound, not just medicating it. As I continued to research, I was drawn in to crime scene investigation. To be completely honest, I adored shows such as CSI and Criminal Minds, always imagining myself solving these complex crimes, examining the evidence and slamming the perpetrators behind bars whilst rescuing the oppressed victims. This was something that I actually seriously considered for years. I had this huge heart especially for child slavery still, blossomed from my grade eight teacher, but now it had especially grown to a heart for human trafficking and especially the women caught up in the sex trade. I was determined to put an end to this disgusting living tragedy by becoming an crime scene investigator. I had plans to attend a local university to get my degree in Criminology and enter into the RCMP or municipal police force as soon as I got the chance. Well, Perspectives in Mission class and the Mexico missions trip changed all that.
During this past year in the Bible college/leadership training program called the Kaléo Program, I took a class called Perspective in Mission. I started to realize that maybe I had been quite misguided. My driving factor in searching for a future career had been justice and the plight of the oppressed people. This class opened my eyes to the fact I knew all too well - that bringing people to Christ and letting them know about His glory and His saving grace was of much greater purpose than to save them from injustice. In a way, the two are connected, because we show the love and grace of Christ when we free the oppressed from bondage, but that cannot be the only thing we do. Meeting physical needs and rendering justice is vitally important, but it is all useless unless we are bringing Christ into those broken places. People have a far greater need for Christ than for their physical needs to be met. Even if they are well fed, protected, safe and enjoying life, they have nothing if they do not have Christ in their hearts. This concept that I had known especially back when my own family were missionaries in Russia came alive again in bright, brilliant colours.
When I was on the missions trip to Él Papalote, Mexico for two weeks in February 2013, God took that opportunity almost I want to say like a carrot, giving me a taste of what exactly my life could look like if I finally just shut up and listened to His voice and not my own. I was leaning on the railing of the dorm building that we were staying in on a cool Mexican night, and I almost felt him saying to me, "You could be here." I did a double-take and was like, "What was that, God?" But I knew what he had said. I did not see a calling into missions at all before this trip, but I'm pretty sure I had just been pushing it away, ignoring the tug on my heart. I had fallen in love with Mexico and missions and it was not going away.
I returned back to Canada a confused mess. I was torn. It seemed that God was placing missions on my heart, but I still had such a passion for justice. Was I just supposed to ignore the plight of the trafficked women in my own backyard of Vancouver, or just abandon criminology? I didn't think God was calling me into ministry as a teacher or a youth worker... What was he saying?! While our group had gone to Missions Fest just a month prior, I had felt God stir my heart for missions around the world, as well as proclaiming justice among the nations. There had to be a way that this all fit together.
My last class in the program was Christian Worldviews, in which we had to write a paper of our choice discussing some kind of issue that pertained to worldviews as well as modernity and postmodernity. My professor practically pushed the Christian's role in the arts as a topic that I should write on. Although I was a writer and a photographer, loving creating and making art, I was pretty skeptical about the whole thing. As I was reading one of the research books for the paper, something that the author said stopped me dead in my tracks. I literally stared at the page and read the paragraph over and over until I texted my leader and asked her if we could talk about my future. The author had said that if God had gifted us with artistic talents and we had not been using it for his glory, then we are not stewarding it well and we need to take action and pursue the gifts he has given. I felt super convicted and tried to process what this meant for me. My leader talked to me about the different options in which this path could take me and where God could possibly be leading me, but it all came down to some pure, simple truths.
I need to look at my spiritual gifts, talents and passions/dreams and see where they all line up. God has not given me these to sit on a shelf and never be used, but he has a specific plan and calling on me to use those passions, dreams, gifts and talents for his glory. Where I am right now, I believe that God is pointing me to doing something like freelance photo journalism for mission organizations, capturing lives that God is changing and showing evidences of his grace through my writing and photos while pursuing justice and mission around the globe - in my own community and further away. Ironically enough, the desire of being a writer or a journalist was not something that I had stumbled upon by chance in grade ten, but rather something put there by God, a little seed planted deep in me that now has blossomed and bloomed into this incredible picture of the exciting life God has in store for me! That dream and desire that started primarily in Mexico has never fully gone away, and I know that a Hispanic or Spanish country is in my near future (one of my goals being to become fluent in Spanish). God has a path that he has set before me, and although I don't know what it is quite yet, I know that he has a plan for me and it is up to me to test and put myself out there, seeing where he is leading me.
"Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him and he will make your paths straight." -Proverbs 3:5-6
