Sitting on the edge...

Last semester was really hard. And I mean really hard. In the midst of it I applied for a study abroad program in Thailand. I got accepted and got excited and started seeing how realistic it was for me to go. My parents and I started looking at the numbers and decided that if I really wanted to go and felt called to go then the money would happen. But when I really started praying about it and looking at the reasons why I wanted to go, it didn't seem like the wisest thing to do at the time. It was a hard decision. But ultimately I felt no peace about going, so I didn't.
After deciding that, I realized the main reason I wanted to go this semester, was to get as far away from here as possible. I wanted to get away from all the hard things that were going on in my life and see the world. Well that just wasn't gonna cut it. What a selfish reason to leave. What a selfish person I am! I started working through this towards the end of last semester, when I started to feel so focused on myself, so drawn into my own world and my own problems and wants and needs. I started to see how desperately I wanted to pour out into other people again. Just like this past summer and just like I was before a bad semester. That is when I feel most alive, when I am pouring into other's lives. Then I feel most like who God intended me to be!
So I started thinking about how I could best serve this summer. I knew I could apply and go back and be a counselor this summer at Lurecrest. I know God would use me there. I know I would see him work and I would feel so drawn to him. But then I started playing around with another idea. I wondered what it would look like to go and to serve another body of believers. What if I went and served abroad. To see God's community working internationally. I have always had a heart for missions. This was my opportunity to apply and see what God does with the rest!
So I applied. I sent in my application and now starts the hard part. Now that they have narrowed down two places they think my gifts could be best used its my turn to think and pray and decide. ..

Do I want to live in community here in the mountains of North Carolina? There will be happy times and sad times. Silly times and serious times. I will go back to a place I am all too familiar with at times.

Or do I want to venture out into this big world and do things I've never done and experience things I've never experienced before.

Here, in Vienna, Austria there will scary things I am faced with. Am I ready to live where I see street signs and can't read them? Where I struggle every day just to have a conversation with someone on the street?

And here in Dublin, Ireland am I ready to live day to day being flexible and open to all the unpredictable things God wants to do that day? Can I walk up to a stranger and tell them about my savior? Can I spend countless hours becoming friends with someone only to test it by proclaiming the truth in love?

I feel like I am sitting on the edge of something. The edge of who I am and who God wants me to be. All of these places will change me. No matter where I go I am going to come backed changed by the grace of God. So as I plunge ahead into the unknown, and I mean that as literal as possible because it really is unknown right now, I am praying that God's will be done. I'm praying that he puts people in my life that he can speak through these next few days as I make this decision. I'm praying for wisdom. I want to be used! God, please just use me. Wherever, whenever, however. I wanna see your glory proclaimed to the ends of the earth, whether that starts in Ireland or Austria or the mountains of North Carolina.