Living life with a calling
can seem like the weight of the world is on your shoulders… trust me, I know.
The year that I was making
the transition from 2nd grade to 3rd grade I went up to
Camp Cedar Crest with my church for the first time. My expectations going up
there were that I was going to swim, hang out with my friends, and maybe learn
a little about God. I didn’t think of camp as a place to meet God and open up
your heart to Him in a whole new way, I was just focusing on being with my
friends. So, of course, when I don’t think anything is going to happen and that
God isn’t going to do anything dramatic with my life but that I was just going
to be another kid worshipping and listening to sermons, something happens. On
the last night of camp I had a pretty big encounter with God.
It seems pretty common
that when us humans doesn’t think that God will do anything, He does. That
night I was called to be a pastor.
I came back down the
mountain with my calling but I still wasn’t sure if it was an actual calling
from God. I mean, I was in third grade; I could have just thought it to myself
and thought I heard God. I got home, told my parents, and of course they were
excited but nothing dramatic happened. I just kept on living my life. My 3rd
grade year was going really well. I had two best friends and the best teacher
that I have ever had in my entire life. Life was good for me. During this time
I kind of began to forget about my calling because it seemed so insignificant
at the time. How is a 3rd grader going to become a pastor?
My 4th grade
year rolls along and I was expecting to go back to school and for everything to
be the same as it was the year before, but it wasn’t. That year I was in a
different class than both my best friends, which stunk, and I had a difficult
teacher. Well, when school started both of my best friends decided they weren’t
going to hang out with me anymore and stopped eating lunch with me. They
ignored me, wouldn’t talk to me, and acted as if I didn’t exist. For the next
couple of weeks I was a very lonely, sad, and rejected girl with no friends
because they were my best friends and I thought that they were all I needed. I
am the kind of person that when I meet someone and we become very close and
call each other best friends, I expect us to be best friends forever, which
cause this loss of friendship to sting a whole lot more.
That same year was pretty
terrible. I didn’t know how to make friends very well, and I wasn’t girly
enough to hang with most of the girls. I was athletic and I would play
kickball, the other girls would just walk around the playground and talk and
that stuff I just didn’t want to do. During this year I began to turn my back
on God. I cocooned myself in my own world and was convinced that God didn’t
love me because He let these awful things happen to me. Aso during
that year I met this amazing group of guys that I just fit in with. They
weren’t girls so there was no drama and they were more fun to be around. One of
the boys I have known since preschool and the others I have known since 1st,
2nd, and 3rd grade, but we had never really hung out. We
all quickly became very close and very good friends.
By 5th grade I
had almost completely forgotten about my calling. My life was so wrapped around
school, my friends, and what I wanted to do. At that point I was harboring some
anger and sadness from the rejection from my friends and I was still extremely
angry at God and I just didn’t trust Him anymore. I didn’t think that He loved
me anymore and I didn’t like to pray because I didn’t think He would answer.
In 6th grade I
had completely forgotten about my calling, I was a volcano that blew with emotions
from my 4th grade rejection, and I was living my life by myself. I
wasn’t asking God for help, I didn’t trust Him anymore, I didn’t believe that He
loved me after all these bad things happened to me.
During that year I did
some things that I’m not proud of and I was pretty sure that God was angry at
me and was sort of “retracting” the pastor calling He put on me because I
wasn’t “Christian” enough to be a pastor anymore.
I eventually came to my
mom and she helped me realize that God still loved me, that I could trust Him,
and that I needed to forgive my friends for what they did to me. This made me
feel a lot better but I didn’t think much about my pastor calling.
7th grade
started and I was going to my church youth group, UTURN, and we went to winter
camp this past February. While we were up
there I understood a lot from the teachings. Worship was amazing and the
sermons that were spoken really helped me in ways I didn’t even realize I
needed help. They talked about how you can never disappoint God because He
knows exactly what you are going to do every minute of your life. I needed to hear that and didn’t even know how much. I needed this to be said because of all the times I felt had disappointed God
and felt that I wasn’t good enough to be a pastor. On the last night of this
camp the pastors talked about how the Holy Spirit is still active and that
spiritual gifts are still given. Over the course of my 7th grade
year, I had heard from others that it wasn’t right for women to be in church
leadership. I began to doubt my call.
But being up at camp reminded me of what is true and my calling was real and I
wasn’t sinning by following it.
That same night, the
pastors called up those in the audience who felt like they had a pastor calling
placed on their lives and I went up. They prayed over us and in that moment I
heard God tell me that I needed to start living with my calling in my head. I
needed to act with my calling in mind. If I was going to be a pastor I needed
to start living and acting like it.
I came back down the
mountain and told my mom. She began to tell me how before I was even born her
mom, my Grammie, had said that she felt that I was going to be a pastor. She also told me that the pastor who
dedicated me to the Lord had prayed over me that I was going to be a leader in
the church. At that moment, my mom
confirmed what I knew God was saying.
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