On November 14, 2012, my life totally and undeniably changed. Now, I know this cliche and overused phrase often describes some significant -yet overly dramatized- event in an individual's everyday life. I am a repeat offender, calling my first encounter with Chicago deep-dish pizza and a particularly heart-wrenching and masterful performance of Shakespeare's Hamlet...outdoors under the stars people...as moments that "changed my life".
But November 14, 2012 was no such fleeting experience. Because that chilly Wednesday I received a large, white envelope carrying a large, detailed packet… and I opened my LDS mission call.
Life-changing: Ohhh yes!
I had stalked my apartment complex mailbox all day. I checked it –skeptically- before my 9AM class, back before my 12PM class, and literally ran back at 1:30 because I was suffocating under the nervous energy building inside my chest. When I arrived, breathless and disheveled at the mailbox, the mailwoman was in the act of pushing envelopes into their various slots. After looking me up and down and seeing my frenzied and eager eyes she asked with a half-smile “Are you Sister Barden?”
Ohhh wow…oh wow, oh wow, oh wow….
That envelope felt like 1,000 pounds in my hands. I started shaking, my eyes growing wider and wider as I began to text and telephone members of my immediate and extended family.
That night in Holladay, UT, surrounded by a small group of family –with the Bardens on speaker phone- I slipped my fingers under the lip of the envelope and broke the seal.
I turned the call over, refusing to let my eyes sink below the iconic cluster of words officially marking the document as issued by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. The paper shook lightly in my palms until my eyes in final surrender, dropped to the lower lines on the page. I saw the double Ts and my heart skipped a beat.
Taipei, Taiwan. My new home, my new people, my corner of the vineyard.
Waves of mixed adrenaline and peace crashed over me as realization flooded through every cell in my quivering body.
Asia. China. Chinese….wait…. Chinese????
Above all the fray and chaos and ecstasy inside my heart was a sense of perfect rightness, of order, like the glow of a smile from an unseen guardian watching the excitement settle in.
That sense of rightness has never left me. Despite some of the difficulties of this long premie period, that is absolutely and perfectly clear. It grounds me and assists in bringing me discipline and focus. It also may or may not be part of the explanation as to why I get unnaturally excited every time I see a beautiful Asian family cross my path…..
I know I have been called of God to serve this people and I hope He will help me to be everything they need for those precious 18 months of my mission.
Just keep moving forward – new and better phases are yet to come!
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