When I was in college, I spent many hours listening to talks and reading books about giving my all for Jesus. As I listened to seasoned missionaries like Dr. Helen Roseveare and passionate pastors like Dr. John Piper, I was challenged to consider my comfort zone and flee from it for fear of passivity in the urgent call of Christ. I was deeply in love with Jesus because He had pursued me for many years as ran with all my might away from my church upbringing.
As my heart softened to Jesus in college, I began to desire to live a life that honored Him. I started considering where God would use me. I knew from Scripture that many who followed Christ went to hard places and went through challenging times. My worldview was being shaped by the legacies of Christian missionaries like Nate Saint, Jim Elliot, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I needed these challenges to my Americanized view of comfortable Christianity.
I remember telling God in tears in my dorm room, “I will go anywhere you send me with whomever you choose.” I thought I was offering my whole heart and life. I naively thought I knew what a mission field looked like and I felt ready for this challenging call of Christ to take up my cross.
I would find myself thinking about the kinds of hard circumstances I might be called to at some point in my life. My limited and immature view imagined that God might call me to live without air conditioning, far from my family, for the sake of The Gospel.
So, it was clear that I desperately needed the challenges of other spiritual giants to get me out of my very insufficient comfort zone. I thought that my worldview had exploded to include the huts in a country without proper toilets. I thought a difficult calling was limited to ministry in the inner city or with a tribe in Africa. I can say with firsthand knowledge that ministry in both of those places is extremely difficult but once again, my scope of calling, ministry, and challenging was extremely narrow.
My view of calling and ministry has expanded with years of walking with Him. I have now seen that God often gives us ministry opportunities that we never asked for and certainly never wanted that far exceed my previous inadequate thoughts.
For example, when I approached my late twenties as a single, I thought, “For sure I’ll meet my husband soon. All my friends are married.” When my friends started having their second and third child I thought, “He must be on the horizon.”
But that wasn’t the case. When my heart was broken at the age of thirty-one by a man who I thought I would marry, God gave me a ministry I never wanted. What I desired was to be married and raise children but God, in His sovereign goodness, gave me women with broken hearts to walk alongside, study Scripture, and do our lives together. He gave me opportunities to use the pain, rejection, and tears. My worldview about ministry and calling opened again. Living many years of singleness and ministering out of that stage of life was incredibly rewarding but also vulnerable and painful. And, I certainly hadn’t asked for this season of prolonged singleness.
Fast forward a few years and God called me to a new mission field called the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit. I never dreamed of spending nine months in a hospital with my very sick son. I remember holding him and thinking about that same hut in Africa that terrified me as a new Christian. I remember wishing to be in the hut far from the pain I was feeling seeing my son hurt. But once again, God gave me a ministry I never asked for or wanted.
I can’t say I did this unwanted ministry well on most days for it was consuming emotionally and physically simply being a mom to a critically sick baby but I have a few select memories of God working through my presence in this unlikely mission field.
I held a mom as her son’s heart rate fell to zero and the code alarm sounded. I prayed for so many heart babies and families whom I would never have known without the calling to the heart unit. I prayed for my own son and sang songs to him about our big God. I told him of heaven and he was my ministry. I wouldn’t trade that p
Now that we have lost our son, I find myself with a new ministry. Once again this is a ministry I did not want or ask for. I never wanted to be in the “I lost a child” club like the rest of its members. In the two
I’m guessing that God has given most of us ministries we never wanted. I can think of a few just among my friends.
Folks like the…
Foster parents who are offering their hearts to the unknown for the sake of the children.
Single women giving their everything for Christ and not settling for less than God’s best.
Teachers who bring in extra supplies and deeply love their students.
Nurses who do their very best even when they are bone tired.
Divorcees who choose to engage in church and love on others even when their lives have been torn apart.
Parents taking care of chronically sick children.
Pastors who come to your side during all the beautiful and horrific things life brings.
Families who are pursuing adoption after long battles with infertility and miscarriages.
While I still am unsure about this ministry with hurting families of child loss, I am honored that God would use my broken heart once again in the lives of others to bring glory for His namesake.
For all of you stepping into ministry moments that you never wanted, I am right there too and I see you. Most importantly God sees you and He’s equipped you, even if you never asked for it!
To God be the Glory
