My Daddy Loves Me

I received the following package in the mail today from my Dad:

It was a lovely find when I returned to my apartment with my brain frazzled from a French-translation marathon at White Rock Coffee.  Those are some giant truffles too...you can't really tell in the picture, but it's true.  Harry and David...so they're quite delicious :)

After discovering the package, I called home and talked to my Dad for a long time, and he really, really helped me feel better.  Honestly (perhaps unsurprisingy) I was still rather upset today.  I had a frustrating morning presentation that I don't even want to go into detail about, was completely exhausted for most of the afternoon, and eventually dragged myself reluctantly from the house to work on translating this year's prayer guide in a location with coffee and where it would be awkward to fall asleep.  I just keep feeling beat down...anyone else know that feeling?

Talking to my Dad was immensely helpful though, because he helped talk me through a lot of vocational things, and reminded me that it's okay to not be like everyone else.  It sounds like a silly point, and one that you should have a good grasp on by young adulthood, but I really need to be reminded of it every now and again.  I think I alluded to this in a previous post, but there's no one else with my same ministry interests in seminary: everyone wants to become an ordained pastor, and I couldn't stand the idea of being confined to a specific state or be at the mercy of the bishop to tell me which church I'm working at (this probably sounds completely foreign to non-United Methodists...google "Methodist Appointments" if you're really interested).  Even my interest in missions is different from the other people: everyone wants to go and help the poor people in third-world countries with missions, but I've always felt more drawn to middle- to upper-class people who feel like they're lives are going splendidly and think they don't need God.  If everyone goes to help the poor people (a very good thing to do, of course), who is going to be leftover to help the rich?  Nobody thinks of European countries as a mission field, but that's precisely the work I want to go into, assuming I stay on the ministry career path.  There are plenty of places in the world where the gospel hasn't been heard at all...but what about "post-Christian" Europe, as the continent has come to be called?  Who's going to serve them?

I think that in the long run, it's a good thing that I have such individually tailored interests; if nothing else, it makes it easy to pinpoint the type of work I want to do, and involves ministering to an often-overlooked people group.  But honestly, in the meantime, I feel a little bit crazy.  I get weird looks from people for not being on the ordination track, and have difficulty articulating offhand what I want to do with my seminary degree - a degree that, by it's very nature, is tailored to leading American church congregations as an ordained pastor.

I mentioned a few days ago that I had a "vocational breakthrough"...I can now tell you that that breakthrough was deciding to chase after the French ministry goal with my whole heart, not spending all my time quibbling about not being like the other people in seminary.  If you've known me long enough, you probably don't think that the "French ministry" thing is much of a breakthrough...because to an extent, I've always articulated that sort of calling on and off, and every time I have a "breakthrough," that's what it is.  Friends have often given me weird looks when I tell them excitedly that I want to go into French missional ministry, and say something along the lines of "Wasn't that already what you were doing?"  I think it's a little-known fact how much time I spend doubting that goal in my head and wandering away from it; so when I come back to it all excitedly, most people don't even know that I've been gone.

I remember three or four years ago, sitting in a session at a Campus Crusade Winter Confrerence in North Carolina, and suddenly thinking how selfish it would be of me not to use my foreign language skills for ministry.  By being fluent in a second language, I can speak about God to twice as many people as the average monolingual American.  To me, it seemed obvious that it would be hugely selfish not to use French in ministry in some way...I was surprised to find out, later on, that other people didn't really think of language that way.  As small of a thing as that is, I think that sort of solidifies a call to French missional ministry.  I hate using "call" language, but I'm at a loss for other words in this situation.

Part of my recent struggles, then, has been confusion about whether or not seminary is a necessary step on the road to this vocational goal.  I'm such a minority in my interests and passions that it's easy to feel like 99% of what I'm learning in my classes is completely unnecessary.  That is a very, very frustrating situation, especially when the seemingly irrelevant material causes me mountains of stress as teachers cram tons of apparently useless assignments down my throat.

So we'll see how the rest of this year goes.  I think I have some major thinking to do about whether staying in seminary is the right thing for me to do.  In the meantime, I'm going to try to keep my eye on the final destination, without getting derailed by every pit-stop along the way.