When Your Life Goes On Without You

     This week has been wonderful. Making crafts with trash and creation has proven to give me more of a competitive nature and desire to figure things out. Christmas reminds me of all things home. Back home. It makes me a little sad to think of the festivities that have come and gone in my life. I have tried to picture what things will even be like next Christmas! I think that is why I have thrown so much effort into making this place seem like home.
    While being at the college feels far from missionary status, it does remind me of how lonely it is to be far away from everyone you know and love- indefinitely. This season has given me a grace for our missionaries that I may never have come to had I not been yanked from my comfort zone. Missionaries serve God just like Christians in the states do.  The difference? There is no "superstar" following. Many ministers are able to get up and keep moving daily because they see the fruit right in front of them. They are in warm buildings and offices, have people around them who "love their teaching", and are able to feel a connection to the body. Missionaries seem to go alone. Sure, they have "support", but it is hard for people to understand their new life. "Old" life moves on and they don't relate. Things seem so pointless in comparison to the reality that people are dying without Jesus.
    None of these things are new information to me- just a little more "real" being so far away. It also reminds me that I will be so different when I get back. I see it even now! As our time here passes (so very quickly), I know this season will be over. Gone just as quickly as it came. I will never forget the time here. God called my family out to focus on Him. He, a jealous God, wanted our entire heart. He has it. So, as life goes on back in San Diego, I sit here waiting as God makes new paths for us. This hymn has encouraged me recently because it reminds me that God is the one who calls us and leads us. As hard as it has been to be away this season, and with all the honing God is doing in our hearts and life, it has given me the proper perspective. "So I send you to lose your life in Mine". This has been a hard, hurtful reality- and it was almost too much to bear- except for this reminder: "So send I you My strength to know in weakness, My joy in grief, My perfect peace in pain". He is always there. Even when "my life" goes on without me, He is at work making my path straight!


So I Send You
So send I you to labor unrewarded
To serve unpaid, unloved, unsought, unknown,
To bear rebuke, to suffer scorn and scoffing-
So send I you to toil for Me alone.

So send I you to leave your life’s ambition,
To die to dear desire, self-will resign,
To labor long, and love where men revile you-
So send I you to lose your life in Mine.

So send I you to hearts made hard by hatred,
To eyes made blind because they will not see,
To spend, tho’ it be blood, to spend and spare not-
So send I you to taste of Calvary.

So send I you by grace made strong to triumph
O’er hosts of hell, o’er darkness, death and sin,
My name to bear, and in that name to conquer-
So send I you, my victory to win.

So send I you to take to souls in bondage
the Word of Truth that sets the captives free,
to break the bonds of sin, to loose death’s fetters,
So send I you to bring the lost to me.

So send I you My strength  to know in weakness,
My joy in grief, My perfect peace in pain,
To prove My power,  My Grace, My promised presence,
So send I you, eternal fruit to gain.

So send I you to bear My cross with patience,
and then one day with joy to lay it down,
to hear My voice, “Well done my faithful servant
Come share My throne, My kingdom and My crown!”