Day 92: Is This What I Want?

Here's what I want: I want to stay in Portland. I want to serve at Solid Rock, meet the love of my life there, become a teacher in the hillsboro/beaverton school districts and raise a family.

Here's what God has given me: A new job at Liberty High School as an EA. It is a temporary job that ends this summer. Oh, and then there's the job I've been waiting to get for two years that literally just fell into my lap via a great friend of mind from my MAT program at Pacific University.  It's a full time teaching position for English and Social Studies in the 8th grade. 


That's right, two jobs in two days.

The catch?

The second job is in Hawaii. 




That means no Portland, no Solid Rock, no meeting the love of my life there, and no raising a family here. At least, not yet.

If you know anything about my story, you know that all I want to do is teach. God has instilled a passion in me for helping young people find value in what they are learning, and in themselves. I've been waiting for an opportunity like this for two years.

Yet the first question that people asked me when I told them was: is it really what you want? 

My immediate response, in my head because I didn't want to offend anyone, was: does it matter?

So often we seek to find if people are comfortable with the blessings God has given them, without realizing that it doesn't matter what that person wants, but what God is clearly giving them direction towards.

God is in this.

When this blessing came, I accepted it without hesitation. A few people asked if I was going to take some time...and pray it through. And then I thought, oh no...I just took this position without seeking God. 

And then I realized...I've been praying/seeking/asking Him for this for the past year.

I have cried myself to sleep wondering when anything would happen, when I would get the opportunity to do what I felt I was made to do.

And I wanted it to be comfortable, and reasonable within my own wants. I wanted God to give me an easy road: a job in teaching in Portland, where I feel comfortable, where I have a strong foundation and fellowship, where I came back to Him.

Instead, this job will send me back to a place I've essentially run away from. But, I am returning with something I didn't have before: a solid faith. 

But I'm so scared.

I thought God was stretching me and growing me when He took me to places like Portland (when I first got here) and Haiti, but now I see that He was preparing me to go back home, and to share Him with anyone I come in to contact with.

Please pray for humility and boldness, for me, in praising and sharing Jesus.

I know that my desire is to live a life in Portland, but I need to trust God with that and allow Him to shape my desires. When we want more of Him, our desires become His desires, and that is what I need to pray for.

I still can't believe I'm going home.
I still can't believe I'm leaving my home.

I still can't believe how He gives us so much and remains so faithful even though I walk in doubt and fear. 

Selah.



He is good to us.
In Christ,
Lilia