The other night I was walking out of the grocery store when I looked up and saw a trail of cloud left by an airplane. I stopped in the parking lot to admire its minimalism and clarity. It was straight as an arrow and cut right through, like a rip in a giant blue sheet of sky, vignetted by a sunset.
I used to want my life to be like that. Clear-cut. Plain. Full of a direction with no room left for misinterpretation.
But our desires can change, morph, lessen. Thank God my life has not been like that.
I tipped my face down toward the ground, back to the earth my feet are so firmly attached to, and walked on. I crossed through the parking lot and began to maneuver my way through the street. For the last year almost, the city has been doing construction. It’s been a pain, to be honest. They’ve been working their way down my street and have finally planted all their mechanical monsters right in front of my house. Sometimes I get up in the morning and it sounds like a dinosaur is vomiting outside. Other times it’s a dull thud, thud, thud in the background with intermittent beeps from the backhoes and bulldozers and whatnot. You’d think they were each attached to a colossal heart monitor. Also, this chaos in the front of my house means I always have to drive out the back alley way to get anywhere and everywhere instead of the main street like a normal person. Not to mention that Bob the Builder and his crew isn’t the most beautiful sight to behold in the morning when I sit at the table and eat breakfast. First world problems.
But it didn’t bother me that much that evening as I walked home. Something about that time of day where the sun is just setting and the day is just ending makes you thoughtful. The construction made the path winding, with occasional mud puddles to dodge. Piles of gravel and giant metal bins dotted the street as well. I passed a little boy who was having a ball running up and down the gravel hill and sliding into a metal container. Don’t get hurt, I told him. There were ditches along the road too, sidewalks broken up.
This is more like it.
I used to want my life to be like that airplane trail in the sky, uncluttered, straight, and simple. But what we want isn’t always what we need. We ask for a paved street. We get a construction zone. Step right this way! And we furrow our brows and check the map to see what went wrong.
I remember the first time someone planted a seed in my mind, a seed that would grow and make me realize that God’s people aren’t always called to be trail blazers in the sky, but rather to be successful construction zone trekkers, to walk through the unclear to follow each calling God has, step by step by mud puddle by gravel pile by trip over that rock by step…
I was at a youth conference and I happened to run into a friend I hadn’t seen for while. He asked what I was doing with my life (a question I dreaded like the bubonic plague). I was honest with this friend though. At the time I didn’t know what I was doing and I was frustrated and felt stuck. He made a suggestion I felt I’d heard a thousand times. Do something in missions. I proceeded to inform him of all the missioning and ministering I had done. I informed him that I had been there and done that and was still there and still doing that and still didn’t know what to do. Then he looked at me and said something that has really helped change way I see God’s plan for my life and how God works.
“Allie, none of those things are time fillers.”
I came to a mental stop sign.
Oh.
I was all ears. He then proceeded to inform me that he didn’t believe in one life calling. Whatever I am doing right now, that is my life calling. There was more to the conversation and I’ve had others since then with him and his wife, who have both come to mean so much to me, like an older brother and sister.
However, it’s taken me a while to unpack those words and tuck them away into the soil of my mind, to grow and let their roots become part of me. To be real, I’m still figuring out how to live that kind of life. But as I look back now, things are coming into focus.
After I graduated from high school, I spent my time doing missionary things, ministry things, churchy things, but only as a means of fulfilling my dreams, not God’s. And ministry is never fulfilling if we’re trying to fulfill our dreams instead of God’s. I saw those adventures as a bridge, a stepping stone to get to the kind of life I wanted. But, as I said before, what we want isn’t always what we need. So when I didn’t get what I wanted, it left me feeling frustrated, stuck, and purposeless.
That following summer I was laying on a hospital bed, waiting for my mom to get done with work, when I decided to read a bit in the book Education. I pulled up the chapter The Lifework on my phone, and as I read, quotations shot from the pages like bullets and buried themselves into my heart. It was like God was taking my near-sighted eyes and fitting them with glasses, so I could see as He sees.
“The heaven-appointed purposed of giving the gospel to the world in this generation is the noblest that can appeal to any human being. It opens a field of effort to everyone whose heart Christ has touched” (pg. 262).
Boom! She really let me have it there. Lying on a bed in a building where physical illness is cured, I read words that were curing a spiritual illness. I began to see where I was at, my current position in life, with new eyes. Sharing the gospel with this generation is the most noble thing I could ever aspire to. That meant that whatever I was doing right then and there, if I was sharing the gospel, then it not only mattered, but was full of purpose and meaning of the highest kind. This was the good stuff. I didn’t need to go and find a calling. I had one right there.
That summer and into the fall when I went back to work, God stirred these sort of musings and they slowly seeped into my mind and heart. I found that year to be so fulfilling. I saw my work differently, those I took care of differently. What I did mattered. God showed me how He could use me to bring another soul a bit closer to Him. And even if I didn’t know how long I would be there or where I was going next, that was a calling fully worthy of my energy right then and there. It was worth being present in those moments for those girls. Maybe I’m only understanding some of this now in retrospect. But I see it all the same.
Now I’m somewhere else. In another house on a street riddled with construction, thankful my life has not turned out as I wanted it to. I’m still figuring out how to best live in a construction zone. I’m still unpacking what it means to be fully present and following God’s calling right now and knowing how to move forward even if I don’t see the whole picture. There are still lots of question marks. But I’m slowly learning to look less at the airplane trails and instead embrace the journey that is both painful and beautiful, moving but not clear cut, rugged but always paved with God’s faithfulness. And I’m so grateful for the journey He’s brought me through. I asked for one thing, but what He has given is better.
Sometimes we ask for direction and God gives us experience.
Sometimes we ask for our dreams and He gives us His vision.
Sometimes we ask for order to surround us and He brings order within us.
Sometimes we ask to please others and He reminds us to please Him.
Sometimes we ask for airplane trails and He gives us a construction zone.
We long for control, order, plans and dreams fulfilled, but we get process, the unexpected, and delays. But all this forms the organic story that has made me who I am. This collection of experiences, all these this-is-not-what-I-ordered-waiter-please-take-it-back moments, all these things God has used to make me who I am and who He wants me to be. He uses all these things to use me in His plan and to make me a square in the quilt of His meta narrative that I am blessed to be a part of.
And I thank God for a life like that.
