I haven’t written in a long while. I haven’t blogged in an even longer while. As I return I have some confessions:

For most of my life I have been a person who proclaims the truth that being a missionary isn’t something you can only do in a foreign place and, simultaneously, a person who doesn’t think like a missionary when I’m not abroad. Many are the hours that I feel the call to serve St. Pete, few are the moments I’ve answered that call. For most of the past 2 months I’ve been comparing myself in my head to Jonah. Knowing that I am running from Jehovah’s call for this time and feeling as if a gigantic fish is going to swallow me up. I’ve been told by multiple people that I have symptoms of anxiety and I have brushed them off. I realize now that I am anxious as I wait for my whale. The stress in my back and shoulders is unbearable, the feeling of sin waiting outside my door (even my bedroom door) is paralytic, the constant whispers of satan’s thugs are penetrating into and perpetuating my most fleeting thoughts, and I won’t take it anymore.

There are enormous flaws in the ways I view my relationship with God through Jesus. The more I think about what I can do for God, the less I think about what He did for me, and so the glory given to God when I DO things “for Him” are decayed (because I’m really doing those things for myself). I will pray daily to increase God’s glory and decrease the amount of thought I put on myself, in every aspect of my life. I will allow grace to take what it pleases and give what it wills.

That’s what I got. I’m committing to serve where I am, give where I am, and live where I am; instead of in the future that I thought I already had. For HIS glory.