Be Not Afraid: The Fear of Not Being Good Enough

I was asked to preach a sermon on the fear of not being good enough, tying it to Mary's story in Luke. God showed up when I picked up my pen, and this is what we came up with. 

Good morning! Some of you have heard me preach before, and some of you have heard me say that when the pastors ask me to preach a sermon, it’s always on a topic that God knows I need to learn a whole lot about. Well, today’s sermon is called, “Be Not Afraid: The Fear of Not Being Good Enough.” And God knew full well that I needed to work on this all week as I wrote it and practiced in my kitchen…so I just want to start off saying we are in this together today, guys. So before we begin, will you pray with me?

            Good morning, Lord. Thank you for bringing us together this morning to learn about how you view us and who we really are because of you, and thank you for never giving up on helping us learn and grow. Open our hearts and minds to hear exactly what you what you are saying to us today. In Christ’s name, Amen.

            So, we all know that it’s common to hear that Americans are becoming more and more afraid. Despite millions of advances that can improve our lives and statistics that show that our country is actually getting safer, I don’t doubt at all that fear is on the rise. I can feel it. Some people blame this change on the bad news that we hear and see in the media; others blame the new ways social media messes with our brains and with our hearts. Whatever the reasons, though, lots of people say that our culture is becoming more and more afraid.  

            Researchers have asked Americans what they fear the most, and many of the top things are external events that could possibly happen: war, corruption, pollution, losing a loved one. All of these things could happen to someone. But when they asked about what people fear in themselves, people talked about their fear of the unknown, and of not measuring up, of being inadequate, of not being good enough.

            As a high school math teacher, I talk about this with my students all the time. We talk about it most in AP Calculus. In that class, I have students who tell me they worry about their grades so much that they stay up all night studying. They come to me, terrified of what will happen if they get that test back with a grade on it that will drop their grade in our class, which will then drop their GPA, which means they won’t be able to get into the college of their dreams, and then they will surely never get the best job that they find both fulfilling and financially stable – surely, their whole life will be ruined. All because they weren’t good enough that one day in AP Calculus. At that moment, it feels like everything hinges on that one test grade. And they just keep working harder and harder, trying to be good enough.

            But my high school students are not the only people who struggle with this, right? Not that long ago, I learned about an experience called “imposter syndrome.” It’s the feeling that deep down, we’re about to be exposed as a fraud, as someone who doesn’t really belong here because we’re not good enough. When I first heard about it, I was so surprised – there was a name for the feeling I’d had during my first year as department chair, when I thought no one believed I should be sitting in that seat during the meetings. There was a name for the feeling of fear that someone is going to realize I have no theological background and no formal public speaking training, but they still let me stand up here and talk to you. Because you see, I was a kid who thought my life would hinge on that one grade in school, and there are many days now when I’m an adult who worries that I’m not good enough.

            The more I talk about this topic with other people, though, the more I realize I am not alone. After I found out I’d be preaching this sermon, I told a lot of people about the title, and so many of them said, “Mmmhhhm. Send that one my way when you’re done.” There are highly successful people all around us, people who have achieved incredible things in life, who outwardly convey confidence and ease – and so many of these same people also carry within themselves crippling self-doubt and intense fear of not being good enough.

Not good enough to run the meeting we were in charge of.

Not good enough to get that job we really wanted.

Not good enough for the promotion we worked so hard for.

Not good enough for that relationship to last.

Not good enough for God to want us in His story.

Not good enough for God to love us.

Not really good enough at all.

            So, you may be thinking by now – Cindy, it’s Advent. Aren’t we supposed to be talking about Christmasy things? Baby Jesus and Bethlehem and shepherds and angels and Mary? Well, you are right – so today we’re going to look at Mary’s role in the Christmas story to learn how we might deal with this fear of not being good enough.   

            So before we go any further, let’s read the story. Our scripture comes from Luke 1:26-38. (NIV)

In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.” Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.”

“How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?” The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be unable to conceive is in her sixth month. For no word from God will ever fail.”

            “I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May your word to me be fulfilled.” Then the angel left her.

We are going to pick up her story again in a minute, but I want to pause right now and point out a few things that might help us when we’re afraid that we’re not good enough. I’m going to be honest, though – this is a tricky lesson for us to tackle. We have no proof that Mary felt the fear of not being good enough. None. Nothing in that passage I just read said she felt that way. However – by the end of the scripture we’re reading today, we will see very clearly that she definitely was not struggling with feeling good enough. So I’m not going to talk about how Mary dealt with the fear of not being good enough…but I am going to focus on the parts of her story that can help us get to the same trust in God that she clearly displays throughout her story.

So, the first thing I want to point out is how the angel greeted Mary – right off the bat, he says, “The Lord is with you.” Gabriel doesn’t say he’s there because Mary met all of God’s requirements for being the mother of His son. He just says God is already with her – before she had even heard of this crazy idea of a baby, much less before she could agree to it. God doesn’t come to us with a checklist of requirements that we have to meet before He calls us His beloved. He was with Mary before He called her to this special adventure…and God is with us before we realize it or acknowledge it, too. So God tells us we don’t have to be afraid of being good enough for Him to love us or use us because He is with us before we can do anything to be good enough. 

Second, Mary’s reaction to the angel makes me feel like we can be honest with God when we’re feeling afraid. Like I mentioned earlier, we don’t know if Mary struggled specifically with the fear of being good enough, but we do read here that she was greatly troubled, so much so that the angel decided to tell her not to be afraid. And then she asked a question – specifically, she asked about the very mysterious biological component of it all. Sometimes we think we’re not good enough because we’re afraid, because we’re confused, because our doubts outweigh our faith, because we just can’t figure out how to believe that God is in all of this – but these are all very human reactions and emotions. And while God will help us grow and learn and have more faith and trust in Him the longer we walk with Him, He understands that we’re going to feel this way from time to time. Even Mary asked, “How will this be?” If she can ask that, we can bring questions and fears to God, too. They don’t disqualify us from receiving God’s love or from being a part of His story.

            But if we’re feeling that fear of not being good enough, how do we move past it? How do we let go of the fear of not being good enough for God to love us and use us in his story? Well, let’s look again at what Mary heard that helped her say yes and jump into that role God called her to be in. When Mary asked “How will this be…since I am a virgin?”, she was asking about her own role and responsibilities in all of this. Maybe she wanted to know what she had to do to make it happen. But the angel redirected her focus. He didn’t reply with anything about her. Instead, he answered, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.” It wasn’t up to her to get the job done. It wasn’t up to her to be good enough to live out the role God called her to. It was up to the Holy Spirit to make all these impossible things happen – all Mary had to do was say yes. All she had to do was agree to go on this adventure with God to change the world…and God promised to take care of the rest.

And that’s what God calls us to do, too. He doesn’t look at us and ask if we’re good enough to live out the life He wants for us. He doesn’t ask if we’re good enough to earn His love or tell others about Him wherever we are. God does ask if we want to join him. And like Mary, we can say yes, regardless of whether or not we feel like we can do what He’s calling us to. We don’t know what all went through her mind and heart to help her say yes – but somehow, she decided to trust God’s promises and say yes to God even when she didn’t have many details about how it was all going to play out. It’s not like the angel was terribly specific about the whole plan, right? And we don’t get a lot of details, either. But God asks us to trust Him, trust that He is good and that He will be with us the entire time.

There’s one more part of Mary’s story that I want to look at today through the lens of this fear of not being good enough. So here’s the setup – after the angel left Mary, she went to visit her cousin, Elizabeth, and when she got there, she was so joyful about God’s plan for her life that she broke out into song. Here’s what she says in verses 46-55 (NIV):

And Mary said:

“My soul glorifies the Lord

and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,

for he has been mindful

            of the humble state of his servant.

From now on all generations will call me blessed,

for the Mighty One has done great things for me—

              holy is his name.

His mercy extends to those who fear him,

             from generation to generation.

He has performed mighty deeds with his arm;

            he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts.

He has brought down rulers from their thrones

            but has lifted up the humble.

He has filled the hungry with good things

            but has sent the rich away empty.

He has helped his servant Israel,

            remembering to be merciful

to Abraham and his descendants forever,

            just as he promised our ancestors.”

Reading Mary’s song makes me think she’s no longer “greatly troubled” like she was when the angel first arrived, and she’s not even asking questions about the logistics of the plan anymore – instead, she’s focused solely on how awesome God is. She praises God “for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant.” She says, “From now on all generations will call me blessed, for the Mighty One has done great things for me.” That does not sound like a woman who’s worried that she’s not good enough. So what is she holding onto to believe that she can live out this incredible plan for God? Well, God. She’s holding onto God, not herself. She doesn’t talk about what she’s done to be ready for this role. She doesn’t talk about why she’s the best choice for being the mother of the Messiah. She talks about the awesome things God has done, and how much He loves all of us.

            I’m starting to realize that my fear of not being good enough stems from what I’m focusing on – it’s not about whether or not I’ve done the right things or avoided the wrong things to be good enough for God to use me where I am and love me for who I am. It’s not about what I’ve done to earn anything. It is about what God has already done for all of us, and what I trust He will do so that I can live out His will for my life. God knows we’re not perfect and that we’re not going to get everything right, but he asks us to be a part of his story anyway. Mary looks back and references God’s promises and actions from the past…so that’s what we can do, too. We can go back and read scriptures like Ephesians 2:10 that says we are God’s masterpiece to remind us that He made us and loves us. We can read Colossians 3:12 that calls us God’s beloved, His dearly loved children. God is telling us He loves us because He made us. The question is, will we trust Him the way Mary did?

            I’ll end today with another story from my classroom, and I'll try not to cry like I have when I practiced. A few weeks ago, I was rattling off all the homework assignments I wanted my kids in first hour to do before the next test. One of my darlings asked, “What’s it gonna get us?” In my very typical and sassy way, I told him, “My love and affection.” And in all seriousness, he looked at me and said, “Don’t we already have that?” I stopped passing out the papers I was holding and just smiled at him. “Yeah, kiddo,” I said. “You do.”

            If my students, who I’ve only known a few months and who I work with for less than an hour a day, know that I’m going to love them whether or not they do their homework, if they know they don’t have to earn my love…then why do I have to earn God’s love? Why do I have to work so hard to be good enough to successfully live out the life He’s called me to live? I don’t. Plain and simple. And even though I understand it here in my head, sometimes that’s hard to believe here in my heart…but it is getting easier the more I talk about it here with our faith community. I can’t tell you to just stop being afraid of not being good enough. It doesn’t fade away that quickly. But what I can tell you is that today, I believe that God loves you and that God loves me, right this very moment, just as we are. And just like Mary, we can say yes right now to a life with Him, to whatever adventure He’s calling us to. We don’t have to wait until we think we’re good enough – because God loves us and wants to be with us right now, just the way we are.

Let’s pray.

Thank you, Lord, for loving us so much that you remind us we don’t have to earn your love, that a life with you isn’t something we work toward – it’s something we can say yes to every single morning. Thank you for telling us that we are enough. Help us believe it, and help us share that good news with others. In Christ’s name, Amen.

Immense gratitude goes out to Rev. Justin Snider for the freedom to write this as well as the sermon and conversations that served as my springboard for it. 

The Alchemy of Potato Salad

As I grabbed the recipe for Grandma's potato salad, my second favorite food as a kid, I intended merely to scan it to see if I needed to buy any ingredients for the family reunion tomorrow. I stopped short on the first line, though: "Boil and mash lots of potatoes."

I am a decent baker. I enjoy creating food by following precise steps, using carefully measured out ingredients, and I'm pretty good at it.  I am also an excellent sous chef; I love to obey whoever is actually in charge of the food. I immediately knew that "lots of potatoes" meant that, despite the tablespoon measurements of mustard and Miracle Whip listed below, making Grandma's potato salad wouldn't be easy. 

In fact, my first reaction was to call my mother, who had written up the recipe for me when I graduated college, to tease her a bit and demand to know how to measure "lots." But I knew what she'd say: "Fill the pan. See if that's enough." I already knew she had just guessed on the tablespoon measurements in hopes of avoiding this type of phone call. 

So I did just fill the pan to see if that was enough. And it seemed like it would be. But as I began mixing it all together, the texture wasn't quite right; my first taste of it clearly needed more mustard. 

That's when I caved. I called Mom.

Moments after saying hello, I asked how much more mustard to add, and without really answering my question she told me it might need more pickle juice or Miracle Whip, too. She reminded me that Grandma never followed a recipe, and that I had to just add to it until it was right. 

I kept mixing as she told me her travel plans for the next day and about where they'd had dinner that evening. I muttered that the mustard had helped a little, but I was going to try more pickle juice next. She paused for a moment, and my thoughts tumbled out of my mouth. 

"I am much better with a specific recipe. Like your cookies. I'm great at making those. This alchemy of making potato salad is just not the way I work." 

"What's alchemy?" she asked. 

"It's the word they used a million years ago when people tried to make everyday things into gold. They just kept fiddling around with things trying to make it work. Like what I'm trying to do with this potato salad. Only they never figured it out..." I trailed off. 

I just don't like cooking like this. I'm not good at it. I like a detailed recipe. I like steps, with specific requirements. 

And as the thoughts formed in my mind, I realized I sounded an awful lot like my students when they say they just can't learn our math lesson. I never let them stop there -- we always buckle down together, keep practicing, and even if their results aren't a perfect 100%, we see growth.

I've learned recently that most times if I need to hear the advice I would give my students, God is nudging me to hear it.  

The monologue in my mind sounded familiar. I've been telling God something like this for months, years. I like plans. I like knowing where I'm going. I like having goals to work toward and to-do lists to complete. I would like to know what life is going to look like around the next corner. And the next. And preferably the one after that, too.

But I'm slowly learning that's not how this whole life and adulthood thing works. And it's not how faith works, either. God's not giving me a five-year plan to follow or even much of a big picture these days. I think sometimes we do get that kind of vision, but that's definitely not where I am right now. God's been asking me to trust Him more and more, live today in His grace the best I can and then try again tomorrow. 

See if it needs more mustard, and then try again. Maybe try pickle juice if that doesn't work. But always try again. No one is on the sidelines saying I should have followed the recipe; it was always meant to be made one step at a time, taste-tested, and adjusted as we go along.

********************

Afterward: I finally stopped fiddling with the potato salad after a while and just put it away, unsure of whether or not it was really ready. When we tasted it the next day, my whole family agreed it was just right. It's amazing what waiting a bit can do...but that's a lesson for a different blog post.

My Liberian God-Adventure: The Monrovia Training

After three and a half months of planning and praying – far more of the latter than the former – I boarded the plane to Monrovia, Liberia, on July 10. We arrived on a Tuesday, and the next two weeks were some of the most transformational experiences of my life.

            When we arrived at Roberts Airport, tired and kinda gross from being on airplanes for 16 hours, our United Methodist hosts picked us up. Dehkontee is the volunteer coordinator for the Liberian conference, and Sam is the manager of the United Methodist Missionaries Compound, which is where we stayed while we were in Monrovia. The sign on the door of the compound had our familiar United Methodist cross and flame – one thing that felt like home. The concrete brick wall that surrounded the compound and that was adorned with barbed wire and upside-down broken glass bottles, however, did not feel like home. Sam and Dehkontee helped us settle into our guest house for the night. We brought mosquito nets – tents really – to sleep in, and then we left them for our friends to use after we left. We met more of our friends who work at the compound that night – like Rose, who owns a catering business and is always the resident cook when Bunny brings a team to Liberia. Throughout our trip, she made amazing meals for us – eggs and oatmeal for breakfast, rice and stew of all flavors, fried chicken and plantains, donuts and coconut tarts. And fresh pineapple. Guys, I didn’t know pineapple could be so sweet.

            We hit the ground running – the very next day, we started the teacher training in Monrovia. First we held three days of training for five local schools there in the city. We started each day with a big breakfast and a devotion, and we drove for about an hour to Elaine Chapman United Methodist School and church. The commute was a bumpy one, but our drivers, Roland and Harrison, always delivered us to our destination safely. Our hosts gathered us all in the sanctuary for a moving opening ceremony – one teacher preached, and others led us in several songs. Our friends lifted their praises to God around us, hands clapping, voices singing. And I was in awe.

            We then split up into small groups, each with one American teacher and five Liberian teachers. We asked them about their greatest joys in teaching, about their biggest challenges, and what we needed to know about their situation so that we could best serve them. As we shared in our group, Jenny, Anthony, Benedict, Arkie, and Alvin shared their teacher-hearts with me – they said they love seeing a student finally get it, finally understand something they’ve been struggling with. That moment of success, that moment of breakthrough – that’s what I’ve described as my favorite part of teaching since I was a tutor in middle school. That was the first of many times that I realized, even though we are in such drastically different situations, we are so very similar. And those similarities are, in the end, far more important than our differences.

            They also shared their challenges – not enough funding to buy books and other materials. Not enough funding to pay teachers. Sounds familiar, too, huh? And yet I tried to be very careful to acknowledge the drastic disparity in their lack versus our lack here. The words we use may be the same, but the gravity of the situation is certainly different.

            We spent the rest of the day and the majority of the next two days separated into grade level groups for our training. Two of our teachers, Jeremy and Tanya, led the kindergarten through third grade group; Carol and I led fourth grade and up group. Some of the teachers taught the same class of students all day, like our elementary teachers here; others specialized in math, science, French, or reading like our middle and high school teachers. Their primary teaching method is direct instruction – teachers write on the chalkboard, while students silently copy it all down in their notebooks. I call that “sit and get,” and in my classes, it doesn’t happen much. Less than half my lessons are days when students take notes, and even when we do take notes, I have students collaborating and talking with each other throughout the period. So our training focused on ways they can help their students collaborate more, do more hands-on work, and generally be more engaged than just writing down information. Carol and I read stories that they could read with their students, and then we talked about how to connect lessons in other subjects to those stories. Our first book was about two friends who travel to visit each other, so we talked about social studies lessons on map reading, math lessons on calculating distance, speed, and time traveled, and science lessons on land formations. I taught them about studying four representations of a single math concept – graphs, equations, numbers, and words – and we worked together to adapt the idea of deepening their students’ understanding to English, French, and science classes. We taught how to ask students to graph numbers and functions by standing in different places in the room, and we played card games to foster number sense. I also taught about brain breaks – little exercises that we do with our kids when they get lethargic or overwhelmed or just because they’ve been working too long and they need a break. I love studying how brain research can improve instruction and learning, so this was one of my favorite activities.

            Later, Carol and I discussed another book on music and emphasized having students read dialogue aloud, and I tied it to a fractions scavenger hunt lesson. We finished our training with a book called What Do You Do with an Idea?, and we asked the teachers to use something we had covered to create their own lesson plan. Carol and I gave them time to work and helped them write lesson plans that they could implement in their own classrooms. Some were excellent, and some needed extra help, just like in any classroom.

            Between sessions, the teachers often broke out in spontaneous praise and worship. They’d come back from break or lunch, walk up to the piano and drums, and just start singing. Some songs were from their Liberian tradition – ones with lyrics that said,

“God you are able, you are able, God.”

“Jesus, we just want to say thank you…for our friends, for this day.”

“Good morning, Jesus, Good morning, Lord. I know you come from heaven above. The Holy Spirit is in control. Good morning, Jesus, Good morning, Lord. In the morning, I will rise and praise the Lord.”

Other songs, though, were familiar to me after singing them here, in this very room – “I Surrender All” struck a particular chord in me. Our friends were passionate – they weren’t just singing to sing along. They were really giving everything over to God – everything.

Singing alongside our friends, praising God with them, helped me realize something – there’s a difference between singing because it’s Sunday morning and praising Jesus because you know He’s God, because you know the Holy Spirit is in control. “Know that I am God,” from the Psalm took on a whole new meaning in Liberia.

            As the trainings wrapped up, Bunny took pictures of students who attend the schools on a scholarship sponsored by the Illinois Great Rivers Conference. Dozens of students filed through to have their pictures taken, and even more milled around asking how they could get a scholarship, too. I’ve been giving to this scholarship advance for five years. Right now, $175 sends a single child to school for an entire year – it covers their uniforms, their books, and their tuition. If you’re interested in helping students like these attend school in Liberia, there is a way to give directly to schools through the Illinois Great Rivers Conference. Just contact me if you’re interested in supporting that mission financially.  

Each morning with breakfast, and each evening after dinner, Bunny led us in a devotion and prayer. During some of those times, she reminded us that we don’t arrive in Liberia, or anywhere else for that matter, assuming we can change the entire culture or the entire country, much less solve all their problems, fix their entire school system. We can’t do it in the mere three days we held the trainings, and we certainly can’t in a single trip or even multiple trips. We emphasized this idea in our lesson planning session, too – not everything we discussed would be applicable for everyone, but that’s okay. We just gave them the tools to make one change, and we had to trust God would magnify and multiply it as He sees fit.

            Bunny emphasized that idea during our closing ceremony, too. During our last afternoon with the group, we gave another devotion and gave each teacher a bag full of school supplies and a certificate of completion for them. Bunny talked about how we didn’t come with all the answers, but instead we came to be their friends who worked alongside them – not ahead merely leading, not behind just telling them what to do, but alongside collaborating with them.

As we were getting ready to serve them, before we could even give them what we’d brought them, they told us of their gratitude – some teachers stood to tell us how thankful they were for our help, for our sacrifice of traveling so far to join them there. And then, before we could offer our gifts, they gave us gifts – beautiful shirts made there in the city. Each gift was selected specifically for the recipient – and we knew what kind of sacrifice they had made to give us these gifts.

            And in those moments, I know, we were living out God’s intention for the church – in Acts 4:32 it says, “All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had,” and that is what we were doing. We came together as a family of faith, and we shared what we had. I just so happened to have educational background to share with them. They shared finances that were already more limited than I can imagine, and more importantly, they shared their deep understanding of praising God and going to God in prayer honestly and humbly about everything.

***

Interested in how this trip started? Check out the first post in this series.

My Liberian God-Adventure: The Prologue

          Some journeys begin long before you leave. 

         This blog series started as a sermon that told of my recent trip to Liberia. I've adapted it a bit to fit a blog format, but I'm sure some of it still reads more like a sermon. This won't be like the previous blogs -- not the ones about literature, not even the travel entries about China. This one will be different. Everything about this trip has been different, so the way I share it will be, too.

          I’ve been teaching high school math ever since I graduated from college with a BS in Secondary English Education and an endorsement in math. I’ve taught Algebra I, Algebra II, AP Calculus, and behavior interventions for kids who are at risk of dropping out – all while acting as department chair the last four years for our nine-person team. While that timeline was moving forward, I also started attending Springfield First United Methodist Church – the big one on the corner of Koke Mill and Wabash, if you’re familiar with the city. For several years I sat in the back of the traditional service and kinda kept to myself – and then I started taking classes on prayer and served on the Staff Parish Relations Committee and then the Prayer Leadership Team, and then I got involved in the Young Adults ministry and started co-leading that, and then I helped launch a new contemporary service that we treated like a whole new church plant – and now I even preach in that service every couple of months or so. 

            I took a journey earlier this year. I’ve been calling it my God-adventure. On July 10, I flew to Monrovia, Liberia, with a team led by Bunny Wolfe, the mission and outreach coordinator for the Illinois Great Rivers Conference of the United Methodist Church. We spent two weeks there, and we held two trainings for teachers who work at United Methodist schools – over six days, the five of us American teachers worked with over 60 Liberian teachers on engagement strategies, classroom management, and lesson planning.

            But I’m getting ahead of myself. This journey didn’t start July 10. In fact, the seed was planted in 2012 when a friend of mine who is a United Methodist pastor told me that our conference sends teams of teachers to train Liberian teachers. The idea caught my immediately attention. Then, a few months later I heard a woman from Springfield First talk about her medical mission trip to Liberia, and as I sat there crying in the pew listening to her story, I knew God was calling me to go. But…the conference didn’t send a team that summer, and the next summer I spent every waking moment writing my AP Calculus curriculum…and the next summer I worked on my thesis for my master’s degree at UIS…and then the next summer my school asked me to chaperone a German exchange program….The timing for the trip just wasn't working out. But Liberia always stayed in the back of my mind, tucked away in the corner of my heart. I prayed for the country during the Ebola crisis. I gave scholarship donations for students going to United Methodist schools. Whenever anything came up about Liberia, I responded, “You know, my church conference sends teachers there to train other teachers – and someday I’m gonna go.”

            But life just kept rolling on – and in 2015 I moved from Springfield to Jacksonville, and I found myself in a much quieter, much slower paced chapter in my life. I had finished my master’s degree, I was settled into teaching calculus and leading as department chair, and my social scene had drastically changed with my move to Jacksonville. I had no idea what might be next for me – and that made me worry. I worried a lot – I worried that I didn’t know what goals to pursue next, what direction to take as I moved forward, and I even worried that maybe nothing new would be on the horizon for me. Eventually, I started praying, “What’s next, God? Use me – just point me in the right direction.”

            And in that season, God told me to, “Be still.” Really. Psalm 46:10 started following me around – it says, “Be still and know that I am God!” It showed up in my devotions, in sermons at church, in videos that came to my email, in my newsfeeds on Facebook and Instagram (I kept half a dozen screen shots from my phone during those few months as a reminder), we talked about it in my small group at church, and most importantly, it came up in my quiet time, alone with God – it just kept echoing in my heart. “Be still and know that I am God.” Now, remember the litany of activities and responsibilities that I rattled off earlier? The ones that kept me crazy busy while I lived in Springfield and then all of the sudden all wrapped up at the same time when I moved to Jacksonville? Yeah, I’m not good at being still, guys. I’m terrible at it. It makes me anxious and uncomfortable. But God knows I needed it, that I needed an extended Sabbath to slow down…and so I eventually started focusing more on being still and knowing that God is God, and that I am not. I kept asking God what was next for me, but I stopped trying to figure it out, stopped trying to do it all by myself. I even decided that for 2017, instead of making a New Year’s resolution, I’d focus on the word surrender with God – surrendering to His preferred future for my life instead of desperately trying to be in control when I clearly was not.

            So last spring, I found myself facing my first totally free summer vacation in six years – no grad classes to take, no curriculum to write, no exchange program to coordinate. And I was actually okay with the idea.   

            And then on March 24, I got an email from a friend of mine – well, she and I went to college together, and she goes to Springfield First, too, and we’re friends on Facebook – that kind of friend, you know? She emailed me because she’d heard about a mission trip our conference was taking to train teachers in Liberia. And even though she doesn’t know me very well and we don’t talk very often, she thought I’d be interested. Me. God put it on her heart to contact me. I read that email before going to work that day, and I remember thinking, “I’m going to Liberia this summer.”

            Over the next few days, I told my sister and a couple friends – and they all agreed right off the bat, too, that it was time for me to finally go. But my old ways of worrying came creeping back…how would I pay for the trip? How would I plan for it in just three and a half months? What if God wasn’t calling me to go on this particular trip? What if, what if, what if? So, I started praying, and I asked my small group at Springfield First to start praying, too. You know, sometimes it’s hard to hear God in the still, small voice…but it’s even harder to ignore God when He talks through your loved ones. “Go,” they said. “You know this is the right time. Get more information. If God opens the doors, you know it’s the right time to go.” It’s also hard to argue with doors that are not only opened but completely blown off their hinges – and that’s exactly what God did. In a matter of three days, I found out it wasn’t too late to sign up for the trip, that the conference offered a grant to cover half the cost, and that the next informational meeting was a just week away in Springfield.

            So I jumped – I took a huge leap of faith, and I went to the meeting, ready to go to Liberia. I sat in the room with the rest of the team who had been planning the trip for months, and I cried as Bunny showed a video of the students and teachers we partner with in Liberia. Bunny flipped on the lights and asked us to share why we wanted to go – and I could barely hold it together long enough to say, “God is calling me to go – to help these people somehow, the best way I can, as a teacher promoting education.”

            And at the end of the meeting, Bunny needed the rest of the payment for the plane ticket that day…and yet again I had to take another leap of faith. I had no doubt about God’s call – but I had planned to do some fundraising first to cover the cost, and instead I had to pay first and trust God would cover the finances, too. We all know that’s one of the hardest areas to surrender to God…but somehow I did. And God showed up in a huge way – He sent generous people my way to help me cover the rest of the trip. He even convinced the insurance company to cover all six vaccines I needed before leaving – and we all know that’s a miracle in and of itself. But that’s not the only way God sent support – so many people prayed for me and emailed me and encouraged me before leaving. That support was so incredibly valuable.

            And after three and a half months of planning and praying – far more of the latter than the former – I boarded the plane to Monrovia, Liberia, on July 10. We arrived on a Tuesday, and the next two weeks were some of the most transformational experiences of my life.