Today my blogging prompt is about a choice that changed my life. My problem is not thinking of "one" but of "which one" had the most impact?
(Forgive me if I have shared pieces of this in previous blogs).
When I was a sophomore in college I chose to spend my summer as a summer missionary in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. I thought I was going to give outdoor concerts around the city as part of a praise band. Two weeks before I left I received a phone call in which I was informed that my location would be the same, but my assignment had changed. I was told that instead of singing my heart out for tourists around the city, I would be teaching English as a second language and working with a street ministry to drug addicts and prostitutes. I chose to keep my word and say yes to an adventure.
One evening as we were walking the streets of Downtown Vancouver around Hastings Street, I heard that whisper loud and clear. The area we were working in was known to be have the highest rate of drug use in North America. It was 10:30 pm and my team mate and I had been passing out hot chocolate and doughnuts to people on the street. Many of our interaction included carrying on a conversation with a person shooting heroin as they talked to us. Sometimes it meant talking to a prostitute until the invitation from a business man driving a jaguar (probably with a wife and kids at home) had a far greater value than a cup of coffee. On this particular night we had one cup of coffee and one doughnut left and I was looking for the person who needed it most.
I just knew there was someone who was in tattered clothes who was cold in the vicinity. As I passed by a nicely dressed man on a park bench that internal whisper became loud and clearn, "TURN AROUND and offer that man what you have left." I wanted to keep walking because he did not fit the description of who needed it most in my mind. I was frozen. I could not take another step. It was as if God put a wall in front of me that forced me to turn around. Confused, I approached the man and offered him a cup of coffee. What transpired over the next 45 minutes has never left my mind. We discovered that this man was contemplating suicide. He was in the process of heading back to his apartment to end his life when a friend passed by and told him to sit on the bench. She would be right back. We sat with this man and honestly just encouraged him and spoke hope over his life. He ended up not following through with his plans and a friendship with him formed and continued for months past my time in Vancouver.
Choosing to stop. Choosing to jump the tracks and go off course. Choosing to trust my gut instead of what "made sense" changed my life (and his).
It was that same gut choice to go off the track and not finish college but instead take a job I had always wanted. It was silencing the voices of expectation for a person my age to follow the status quo. It is not a bad plan. It just wasn't the right plan and time for me.
The same screaming whispers encouraged me to choose to quit that dream job years later and work for The American Red Cross after Hurricane Katrina and teach people about disaster preparedness. I went as an Americorp, leaving the best salary and benefits I've ever had to pretty much volunteer. My dad could NOT wrap his head around that one. It was only the beginning of highly nonsensical choices in my life.
I have spent my entire adult life choosing to take an adventure and follow a unique path that many do not understand. Thankfully, God introduced me to a man with a similar desire for unexplainable adventure.
Together we chose to start our marriage by moving to Atlanta for no salary and almost 3 years later, we are still walking that road. The choice to walk by faith and not by sight and say "yes" to the things that do not make an ounce of sense to many has been the greatest, life changing choices we have made.
Listening to the whispers until they turn into screams.
Taking risks.
Saying yes.
Adventure.
Feeling alive.
Knowing me.
Jumping the tracks.
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