Dreams

There's only two main things I've ever wanted to do with my life: Be a scientist and be a missionary.

I fell in love with Science on the first day of second grade... the day that textbooks are handed out. I was given my science book and opened it up to peruse it while the rest of the class received theirs. I remember turning to the first page and just starting to read; it was something about dinosaurs and how they lived a long time ago and there was a picture of the now defunct brontosaurus munching happily on Mesozoic foliage. From that day on, science was my thing. Most of the books I checked out of the library were about nature or animals. every career aspiration I had was science related: Zoologist (2nd Grade), Palaeontologist (3rd Grade), Marine Biologist ( 4th Grade), Aerospace Engineer (5th Grade), Biomedical Engineer (College), Biomedical Research (Current). That's about 23 years of my life spent in a deeply committed relationship with my main squeeze, Science.

But, what Science didn't know was that, at age 14 I met someone, Jesus Christ. At first it was great. My sins were forgiven; I felt truly loved and accepted for the first time in my life; life was good and getting better every day. Science and I were still making plans to run away together to a prestigious university and live happily ever after working for NASA and designing space shuttles. Most of my friends from Church were dreaming of being pastors or pastors wives and, while I thought "good for them," I didn't think God had something like that in store for me.

"God knows me," I thought "He knows I'm too shy. I might actually have to talk to people I don't know if I did something like that." Time went on, though, and I grew in Christ and He began to put more and ore of a burden for souls on my heart until eventually as I neared the end of high school I conceded just a bit. My new tune was "Well, if God really REALLY wants me to be a pastor's wife I guess I can do it... but only in America. I'm not going anywhere were I can't take a hot shower." I know, very magnanimous of me.

That all changed on April 9th, 2000. Well, it began to change before that. I was away at school at the University of Oklahoma (the prestigious university I had applied to had turned me down), 833 miles away from my home in Atlanta. Being thrust into a brand new situation all by myself was the catalyst I needed to come out of my shell. Almost overnight, I was a people person and the thought of trying to make friends with new people wasn't so scary. On top of that. I went from going to a small church in Atlanta to going to a VERY small church in Oklahoma City. The thing about going to a "pioneer church" (a church that has only been open for a short while and is still in the growing stages) is that you get to see first hand what it takes to build a work for God and you generally have to be very involved in helping to build that work... because, frankly, there is no one else.

Because OKC is 20 minutes away from the OU campus and I didn't have a car, I generally spent Sundays in the city and was dropped off back at school after the evening services. April 9th, 2000 was the day after my 19th birthday (just gave my age away there... do the math yourself). One of the girls had wanted to stay at the church and work on a mural she was painting in the nursery so I stayed with her to keep her company. I was sitting, reading a quarterly magazine called "The Trumpet" that that the Christian Fellowship Ministries (which my church is a part of) puts out. It contains testimonies of what God has been doing in our churches all over the world. One of the testimonies caught my eye because it was from the church in Surinam, which borders my home country of Guyana. I was reading it and God spoke very plainly to me and said "You're going to do the same thing in Guyana."

I know, when people start referring to God speaking to them folks start to slowly back away. I'm not saying that the sky opened up and a light shined down and an audible voice shook the room as a choir of angels harmonized. But I know the "voice in my head" and this was not it. Take it for what you will; I took it as the Call of God upon my life.

From that day on Science was no longer my main squeeze, Calling was. But Science was never totally out of the picture. I left OU after my Freshman year but I continued to study engineering, first at community college in Atlanta, then at Drexel University in Philadelphia. I tried to tell Science that we were just friends but, honestly, I wasn't even fooling myself. I loved science. I loved reading Science; I loved doing Scince; I loved thinking about Science; I loved talking about Science. But I truly love the things of God more. Since that day in 2000, my burden to touch the world has grown so much farther than Guyana. There are so many nations where I want to have an opportunity to go preach the Gospel. I suppose I felt that I would pursue my career for as long as I could and then, one fateful day, God would tap me on the shoulder and say "It's Time" and I'd be able to activate Missionary Mode and hop on the next international flight out of town.

And maybe it will go down like that. After all, I know God's plans for me are so much greater than anything that I can build on my own. Sometimes I wonder if it will go down at all. 11 years later and I'm really not much closer to either of my dreams than I was that day. I was in school, on and off, for 8 years and had to leave just a few credits short of my degree due to financial constraints. I've spent the last 3 years chasing two-year-olds in a preschool and not working on my Nobel Prize in research lab. I'm a stay-at-home mom now who's attention has been, I'm sad to say, sorely distracted from the cry of the nations this past year. But, one of my favorite promises from God is that is that He is the Author and Finisher of our faith. Which means The Lord is the one writing my life story, not me. And, since I'm still here, he's not done yet.

YOUR TURN: What steps do we all need to take to achieve our dreams?