My Social Media-less Life

Bloganuary Writing Prompt:
What was your dream job as a child?

This is one of those questions that I could answer right away… and technically I did type the answer out already but I want to build up to the answer. 😉

My entire “career” in school (from Kindergarten to 12th grade) I used the same curriculum: ACE, School of Tomorrow. For the first few years I was in a private school and then my mom decided to homeschool my brother and me but kept the same curriculum.

School of Tomorrow is very heavy in phonics, language and storytelling. Since it’s a Baptist-based curriculum, they would mainly tell stories of heroes of the Christian faith.

Florence Nightingale, John G. Lake, D.L. Moody, Hudson Taylor, Adoniram Judson… I could go on and on about the people’s stories they used to help build language skills.

Then of course School of Tomorrow was very big on the First and Second Great Awakenings and the big names from those times…

My personal favorite however was David Brainerd. I had to do a literature book about him and something about the way he did so much with just a short amount of time (he died at 29) was always so amazing to me. I was 12-13 at the time and thought, “Man… I need to get on it.”

One of the things that all of these people have in common, is that they were all missionaries. Some of them were “missionaries” in their own country, but they all went away from their homes to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Because of that backstory I can now tell you, I wanted to be a doctor/missionary to China for the longest time.

Until one day my mom said, “You do realize that you need to go to twelve more years of school just to be a doctor. And if you want to be the most effective for Jesus, you might want to learn at least a little bit of Chinese before you go.”

She could have stopped at the “12 more years of school” and that would have sufficed.

The funny thing was, my mom wasn’t trying to discourage me and I always knew that. She was just trying to help me see that I would need to work MUCH harder than I was at that time if I wanted to do any of these things.

All of those people I mentioned above, they all had to work hard and beat nearly impossible odds to be as effective as they were for the Kingdom of God.

And what was I doing? Complaining about how much I hated geometry.

That’s not going to win any awards.

I’ve since realized that I still need to work hard to be effective for the Kingdom of God and do the best I can to achieve that.

To finish up my story…

I won’t be going anywhere anytime soon. I’m realizing my calling is great but it is not ubiquitous.

I can do just as much for the Kingdom of God with the gifts He has given me in my local area as I can if I were to go halfway across the world and preach to people who have never heard of Jesus.

Because there are people in my own neighborhood who have never heard of Jesus.

I don’t need to go across the world if I’m barely willing to go across the street.

Some people were made to go across the world. I am not one of those people. And as I’ve become an adult, I am more okay with that.

Would I still like to travel? A hundred percent.

But I’m okay if the occasional road trip with my friends or my mom are the most traveling I’ll ever do for the rest of my life. Because the people in my immediate circle of influence need me just as much as those in China need help.

Someone else can be concerned about China. I’ll keep to Kansas City, Missouri, thanks.