My life from now on...

After my first day volunteering in the clinic I couldn't stop thinking about how much I enjoyed it. Getting the chance to care for people & their health when they are in need is a passion God has given me. As I sat by the fire that Sunday night reflecting on the day & all that had gone on in the clinic, I heard a still, small voice speak to me when I was least expecting it. "Kelsey, this is what I've called you to. I have made you to do this for all your life for the glory of My name. All else pales in comparison to the joy you will know serving my children in my name through my love." Suddenly it all seemed to make sense. My desire had become that of the Lord. With the passion He has instilled within me and the love He has given me, God was just waiting for me to understand what it is that He is calling me to. Nate Saint puts it best in the book Jungle Pilot when he says, "Have you noticed that when a man finds the will of the Lord for his life, there always seems to be an evident relationship between the talents or gifts or preparation the Lord has given him and the job the Lord has called him to do?...Now we rejoice in God's gracious care for our lives even before they were entirely His -- preparing us specifically & without any wasted motion for the job He had for us to do!" God gave me the desire to be a nurse & the passion to help people in a medical capacity long before I began to feel any leading toward mission work and certainly before I went to Peru and felt a specific call to overseas medical mission work for the rest of my life. Thinking of all that God is & all He has done, I am taken back in awe. Amazement is the only word I can think of to describe the overwhelming love that has grown in my heart for the Lord, multiplying faster than I can understand. In the light of His glory & grace, I feel so inadequate to be used by Him yet precious & treasured as a child of God who is blessed to be called upon to be used as an instrument sharing God's glory & grace with souls lost in darkness.

As I dwell on memories of Haiti & the love /god has given me for those people, I can't help but see a connection between that and the immeasurable joy I feel in helping to restore health to people. I felt an immense burden on my heart as God continued to speak to me more clearly than ever before. "I have given you the desire to heal people's bodies so that then through you they may also hear of me and I may heal their soul & restore them." Since that evening my mindset on life has changed, and I've seen God teaching me in preparation for the work He has in store for me.

I have always had dreams for my life -- many of those same dreams every other young person has of marriage, a quaint life in a nice house, kids, and a fulfilling job. But God has changed my dreams. He has given me a passionate desire to live a radical life sold out to God. And I can't live a radical life with the same traditional life & dreams as the rest of America. A fulfilling job is nice, but it means nothing if the rest of your life is confortable & self-centered. You can give your 2 cents of meaningful humanitarian work for others and then return home to all the comforts & conveniences you could ever need. You can live most hours of your life indulging yourself while occazzionally volunteering at soup kitchens & clothes closets, VBS & children's ministry, write a check for you rmonthly giving & occassionally give to a mission trip.

A fulfilling life means living out an uncomfortable life of servanthood that the Lord has called us to. A fulfilling life means not separating youself from those in need so you can choose when to acknowledge poverty & desperate need, but it means living among poverty in the midst of desperate need so that all of life is spent fulfilling Christ's purpose to feed the hungry, help the ppor, clothe the naked, and care for the sick but ultimately to love the unloved, to love the least of these, and to share with them a hope greater than anything this world has to offer. I have finally claimed God as my only joy & grasped what that truly mean. God gives me joy inloving those who don't know the unconditional love of my Heavenly Father. He gives me joy in using my gifts to meet the needs of others and showing them the One who meets all their needs, even the ones they may not be aware of. That joy is greater than any I've ever known. That is an eternal joy.

My life is in God's hands to be used in bringing glory to His name. I will live it radically sold out to Him following wherever He leads serving others & proclaiming His name among the nations. I will not have the quaint country home, kids who grow up with most everything they want, and plenty of money to spend of frivilous things. I may not even have a husband. No, I have forsaken the dreams of this world for the one desire of my heart -- my Lord Jesus Christ. I will live as a servant, not knowing now what exactly that will look like but excited to find out in God's timing. It may very well be a life of physical discomfort surrounded by third world poverty, rampant disease, malnutrition, Voodoo, witch doctors, and spiritual warfare. But it will be a life lived every day, every hour, every moment for God filled with the joy of counting others as higher than myself. And though it will not be glamorous, though I may have nothing, in Christ I have found everything. That is all I could ever want. So here I am, Lord. Take me. Use me. Send me.