I love the way God’s plans are always far better than ours!! Recently, I have been really struggling with accepting possible directions to which I feel God has been leading me. I felt that, as soon as I accepted anything God challenged me with, and began to get excited for it, He closed the door. Missions has been something I have been considering for a while and this past year my passion for missions really began to become a huge desire for me. This was only further excited as I began the application process to a mission’s organization in hopes of going to Ethiopia with a close friend of mine whose parents have served, and continue to serve as missionaries there. Only, as I continued to pray about this I no longer felt as though this was something God was calling me to, at least not at this time in my life. Not only was another dream getting the door shut on it, but the one God seemed to be opening was not one I wanted to go through.

 I kept being challenged by the questions of isn’t there a huge need here in the States? And who is going to stay and serve here? I knew it was a terrible attitude to have, and the questions were valid, but staying here just seemed like a more frustrating mission and I wanted to help those who knew they needed help. My reasons for not wanting to stay here kept multiplying, but the more I fought God on this, the less and less I had a peace about going overseas. I soon gave in, but not with a joyful heart, in fact I began to get pretty negative, and the passion I once had for the future had been taken from me. I couldn’t cheer myself up. So that’s where I’ve been for a bit. In this funk of knowing God is good, and trying to live my life for Him, but not completely living this out since I still held some resentment towards Him.

 Then today I went on a school visit to Zeeland Christian. A school visit that I actually prayed I wouldn’t have to go on. I was hoping they would get a snow day and I would get to sleep in. Thank goodness God doesn’t say yes to these selfish prayers of mine!! Anyway, I arrived and I was just blown away by this school. We meet with the principal, and his passion for God, the children, the school, and his job was just so evident. This school is the most impressive elementary school I’ve ever seen, and as I listened to all of his stories of how different programs can be, it was clear that this school had God’s handiwork all over it. The principal has been a principal there for 27 years, and he centers everything he does around God. The giant leaps of faith he made because he felt God’s nudges, and calls, and chose to listen, are just inspiring. Everything that they do there has a reason, and the outcomes are just beautiful. From the giant rock pillar at the entrance to remind them of what God has done (like how the Israelites would mark places where God did amazing things as reminders) to the faces of the children in other countries that they sponsor, to the classrooms of full Spanish and Mandarin emersion, or inclusion, to the mission’s trips they go on, to just the evident love that can’t go unnoticed, God’s fingerprints are everywhere. I’ve never seen a place like it. As I listened to the stories that the principal, and other teachers shared with me, I found my passion for the future returning. At the end I asked the principal what advice he would give to a person like me who wants to go back home to a public school where I won’t be in a community where God is at the center of everything and where I won’t have the power to make the kind of transformations in a school as he has. It was at this response that I couldn’t help but smile, because I knew it was God’s way of reminding me that His plans for me are far better than mine, and that I just need to trust Him. The principal gave advice about being salt and light wherever I am, and not being scared to take a stance, but then he briefly shared of how God brought him here. He didn’t want to get into education, he had given up on it and he had wanted to do missions!! Go figure! But God had other plans for him, so he listened and became a teacher, and loved it, but then God wanted him in administration, and even though he would still love to be in the classrooms, he followed God, became a principal and God has clearly been using him to do amazing things ever since!! At the end he simply said; don’t be afraid to just go where God leads you, because he was a way of taking you places you would never imagine you would end up! I still don’t know for sure what plans God has for me, but today I was reminded of how they will always be better than what I could plan for myself, and that when I trust Him and take leaps of faith that this Christian leader and other great men and women do, God will do amazing things. Amazing things that I will get to be a part of! God will do amazing things; it’s up to us if we are going to let God use us in them when he presents us with the opportunities. I once again am reminded of one of my favorite Bible heroes, Esther, who knew that God would bring salvation to her people, but she had to decide if she was going to let God use her, or if she was going to pass the chance up and watch as God used someone else. This principal is that modern day Esther, running through the doors of God’s opportunities and choosing to let God use him! I hope I can do the same!