I suppose I probably would of wanted to be a missionary at an even younger age but no one had told me about it yet.
My mom took me to a church service where some people were speaking about their trip to China and I was hooked. Every night I would include prayers for China and missionaries in my bed time prayers.
My dreams were of the traditional missionary. Traveling to a foreign land, living there long term, starting humanitarian projects, buying orphans from the street venders for a six pence (like Gladys Aylward) and giving them a good home, etc.
As I grew older, my dreams became a little more practical. I still wanted to be involved in humanitarian aid in an overseas context. I had the opportunity to finally be working with an organization that allowed me to begin to do what I'd always wanted to do since the time I was a little girl with opportunities to grow and move into other parts of the ministry.
This was a little over six years ago.
Today the song "He Is With Us" by Love & The Outcome came on my radio. I've heard it many times. (You know how "Christian" radio is.)
I began thinking about those words, "He is with us."
He is with us, not against us. He is not just looking over us, he is with us. Present. Experiencing life with us.
The pain we feel is the pain he feels. Not just my pain but everyone who exists, has existed, will exist. This is on top of the hurtful things that are directed at him. The bishop who gives him a bad name. The professor who claims to be a Christian, but systematically works to prove God is not real to his students. The man who wants power and influence and uses the pastorate to gain both of those things.
I'm only twenty six years old so I potentially have many more years to be hurt, but the most painful experience of my life was at the hands of a pastor.
My community, my dream, my plans, my stability, my trusting nature, were all robbed from me because of the selfish actions of a pastor.
This is not to say that it's impossible for me to have a new community, new dreams, new plans, new everything, but you understand how difficult that is for a young person to have to lose all of that right?
I've heard it said that there's only two possibilities on the issue of pain: either there is no God or he's a sadist who looks down at our pain and laughs.
I can see it clearly in my mind and I believe with all my heart that as I sat on my bed while my personal world came crashing in, realizing things were not going to work out, trying to come to grips with the fact that I was not only in pain but it was caused by the person I would normally go to for comfort, God was right there crying with me.
My pain was his pain.
Even now when the sting of pain arises in the moments that I feel lonely, the moments I read other people's missionary updates, the moments I hear other people write about their church job, the moments I see other people involved in the ways I wanted to be involved, the moments I feel like all I can do is question the motives of others, the moments others praise that man, he feels that sting too.
He remembers too.
And he understands in a way that no one else can. Even someone who has been through the exact situation because no one else can do what he can.
Because he is the only one who felt my pain right along with me. My own personal pain and the pain of knowing yet another person used the pastorate, a position for a loving servant, for personal gain.
Six years later and I don't harbor unforgiveness, bitterness, or hatred but that sting of pain doesn't just go away.
It doesn't go away for him either.
That is someone I can trust. Someone I can believe when he says that though it might hurt now, I won't be ruined, that he's holding onto me and is never going to leave.
