Hey y’all, hope you are doing well. I’m going to be completely honest with you today...I am going through a hard time right now. And I don’t just mean today, I’m talking about this season of my life is just hard. Actually, this season has been going on for three years now; it’s just been harder recently than other times. I’m going to expand on this in just a minute, but let me be clear about this before I continue on...I am not posting this for attention, sympathy, or anything like that. I am writing this merely out of hope that it will help someone else who is going through a tough season in their life and can’t find answers to their questions. So let’s begin.
Back in 2015, starting my junior year of high school, people began to ask me, “what are you going to do after you graduate?”. I’m not even exaggerating when I say that I was probably asked that question AT LEAST 10 times a week. I had never even really considered going to college after high school because I am not a school person at all. I would rather clean chicken poop out of a chicken house than to do any kind of school. (That was really random but very accurate). College hadn’t really even crossed my mind until people began asking me if I had started putting in applications to places, or if I had a dream school, or if I had a top 5 college list...you know...the pre-college conversations. It got to the point where I could barely even stand to have this conversation for the millionth time. By my senior year of high school, I had finally decided that I would take a gap year but when I would tell people, I started to say, “I’m planning to take a gap year and work with orphans in a different country.”
Let me take you back in time to when I was around 9 years old (I don’t exactly know how old I was but it was around that age). I actually didn’t remember this part of my story until several months ago when I was talking to a friend and I realized the first time I was called to missions was at this age, not when I was 16 years old. I was at a camp called CentriKid, and it was one of the last nights of camp. I remember feeling the Lord working in my heart that week and calling me to missions. I remember walking outside and sitting on some steps with Shane (my youth/children’s pastor at the time) my camp counselor, and a couple other camp staff members. I don’t have a clue what we talked about during that time, except for the fact that the Lord was telling me to work in missions one day. The next time I felt called to missions, it was a little more specific. I was at a church conference and once again, I don’t remember what was said that night (I guess I need to start listening more) but I felt a nudge in the back of my heart saying, “you need to work with orphans”. I went home that night and looked up different places I could go to volunteer with orphans, but didn’t think too seriously about it until, ding ding ding, we’re back to people asking me about college.
I started getting a little more serious about working with orphans when I was entering my senior year, but I knew one thing was for sure...China was NOT where I was going to go. My youngest brother, Joshua, was adopted from China so I had been before at the age of 13, but I had it set in my mind that because I had already been there, I was not going back. Well, the only place that I could find that I felt comfortable enough to go by myself to work with orphans was, you guessed it, China. It was the care center in Luoyang, China called Maria’s Big House of Hope. Some of you have probably heard of it before, but it is a care center for special needs orphans. I reluctantly applied to go on a week and a half volunteer trip with them for June 2017 and would later be accepted and begin planning a trip back to China. Little did I know that I would fall madly in love with the people, the culture, the food, everything. That is why I do my very best to never say “never”, anymore.
I began applying for different job positions at Maria’s and none of them would end up working out. On December 5th, 2017, I began a part time job at a tax firm in my hometown (that would later become a full time job that I am still at). That same month, a friend of mine that I met on that trip to Maria’s told me about an organization that she was interning with called Bring Me Hope. It is an organization that hosts summer camps for special and some non-special needs orphans in China. Once applications opened up in January, I applied to go for 4 weeks of camp as a volunteer in 2018. I was accepted and began the process again to go back to China for the third time. I fell more in love with China on that trip, wishing I could stay there.
I knew I would be going back with BMH, but when the new year of 2019 rolled around and I started working full time, I didn’t think I could go back. Little did I know that the Lord KNEW I needed to go back. He told me very clear one day in the parking lot of Sams Club that I needed to be in China. So I applied as a staff member for the Zhengzhou campsite and was accepted for that. I thought that my love for China was strong after the 2017 & 2018 trips...well, let’s just say I would now move there in a heartbeat. That specific trip changed my life in ways I still can’t describe. It was by far the best trip I have ever been on. EVER!
Even after all of these trips and all of these times He has been clear as to what I am supposed to be doing, He still hasn’t given me an answer as to where He wants me permanently. It has taken Him three very long years and I don’t know when He will give me an answer. I have been earnestly praying for Him to guide me and direct me as to where I am supposed to be, and if I am supposed to be doing this by myself or if He is planning to send someone along side of me to help me (cause ya know, still single!)...I have no idea. I have complete trust in Him that He will take care of it all. But me being the kind of person that likes to take care of things myself, my faith in Him to get it done struggles a lot of the times. I have had MANY emotional breakdowns and there have been MANY tears cried over these last 3 years in relation to this situation.
So if you are somewhere in this boat of uncertainty and so many unanswered questions and you feel like the questions just keep piling on top of each other and your pile of answers is looking as dry as the sahara desert...let me be the first to tell you that you are NOT alone. My answer basket in as empty as the tomb Jesus was buried in. But, because that tomb is empty, we have hope that He will take care of us and give us the answers we ask. It might not all be in the time that we want it to happen, but it will happen. And I need that reminder just as much as you do.
Here are some verses for you to remember as you walk through this time of “unknown”, but I want you to look them up so that you can find assurance in His truth on your own and it’s not just you reading it off a blog. You’re actually in His word.
- Ecclesiastes 3:1-8, 11a
- James 1:17
- 2 Peter 3:8-9a
- Proverbs 16:9
- Jeremiah 29:11-12
- Lamentations 3:25-26
- Proverbs 3:5-6
- Psalm 37:4
Seek His will above all else. And in this time of waiting, use that wisely. Use this time to draw near and closer to Him. He is the only one who can calm your frustrated heart. He is the only one who knows what is going to happen in your life. And once again, I am preaching to myself just as much as anyone who would ever read this. He has a time for everything, we are only to be the ones to trust in Him.
Love you guys,
-Han <3-
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