Hannah completed the 2011-12 Children at Risk DTS in March 2012. Here, she writes about what it’s like to return home and how she’s been learning to field questions about “What’s next?”
DTS was not just a dream. It was not a separate, 6-month-long world in a happy bubble. It was so REAL that now it’s far more difficult for me to blend in, to just go with the flow.
I know we were meant to be different and stand out. The Apostle Paul and even Jesus said that we are “not of this world,” and that realization truly hit me when I left DTS.
During the DTS, I grew closer to God on a far more intimate level than anything I had known before. I learned how to be in tune with God’s heart and His thoughts. I asked to see people the way He sees them. I asked to see the world how He sees it. I asked to be broken by what breaks His heart.
Sometimes I wonder why it isn’t easy to be back home. I know the answer already: it is because I asked God to ruin me — to ruin me for the ordinary. The best part? All of this has left me hungry for more!
Since DTS ended, my friends and I are all asked the same things: “What’s next?” “How will you make money as a missionary?” “Where will your support come from?”
The questions go on and on like that, but guess what — not only are we OK with not being able to answer them, but we’re also strangely full of joy and excitement that we can’t! It reminds us how big our God is. It teaches us to completely rely on our Father who cares so much that He doesn’t answer right away. He works it out with us and tells us the next thing at the right time — like a dad surprising you with an awesome present that he’s been waiting to give you on your birthday.
But if you ask me WHY I’m going, I can give you an answer. We all can.
What we know right now is this:
We go because we have been called to love the unloved, to feed the hungry, to clothe the needy, to show value to the defeated. There is no greater way to spend our lives that are a gift from God.
I want to hold a baby who has been neglected and needs a home.
I want to be strong and tell the woman in the brothel that she is beautiful and has incredible worth, to then completely lose my composure when I get home.
I want to have food dripping down my favorite shirt and jeans because I am serving lunch to hundreds of street kids.
I want to have no money because I sent my last dollar to someone in need.
I want to go a months without plumbing because I am reaching those who have not been reached before.
I want to live in reckless abandonment through my obedience to God.
I go because I have seen and heard too much to stay.