Discerning.

My coffee hadn't started working this morning (still hasn't, ~10:28 a.m.) and I stared dumbly at two buses that blew by, realizing I could have taken either. Just my route, just my "luck". I don't believe in luck or coincidence in any aspect of my life, so no worries. I trudged along in the mud, trying to shuffle the Merrell boots that have become an ever-popular part of my expat wardrobe around the numerous puddles.

After minimal waiting, a matatu shot up with the conductor waving a sign for Route 111 in my face, asking where I was headed. "Karen? Karen?" "Yep," I smiled, and had no sooner set one foot on the step of the van than it reentered traffic with a lurch. About 30 feet after this, a pleasantly disturbing scraping rattled along from the matatu's undercarriage. In another hundred feet, given that the clatter hadn't ceased, the conductor and driver exchanged a meaningful glance and slowed the van to a stop near the shoulder of the road. They both got out, had a look around the car's perimeter, and thumped the undercarriage a few times. I almost asked if they wanted to borrow the torch (flashlight) I always keep in my backpack, but they had already returned and started the drive. The rattling, scraping ruckus continued. I had to work hard to repress a smile that somehow seemed to teeter on the edge of laughter and tears. I buried my nose in my Bible.

Many exchanges of passengers later, as we were all sitting cozy and cuddled on the various benches, seats, and absence of seats that comprise the innards of that beloved African transportation, the matatu, "We Are The World" came on the radio. I was shocked to hear a man sitting behind me, soulfully following the lyrics until the song's end. Still wondering if I might die from some careening piece of wreckage launched from the van's undercarriage in a fiery explosion of mayhem and uncertainty, I added another question to my morning retinue, a rollover from the previous night, from the previous week, from the previous month, from longer than I have been deployed to Africa: who am I? Seriously, who am I? What am I even doing?

Now, I don't mean that in a bad way. Not at all. I have really enjoyed my time in Kenya and other parts of Africa, and it is easier to reflect on as I watch my passport fill with visas and stamps. Next month, on the 22nd, I believe, I will commemorate one-quarter of my term of service in Kenya as a GEO missionary and the communication specialist for Africa complete. I have many mixed feelings about this.

Lately I have thought about what lies outside the office in Karen. What is vocation? Where is it? Is it in my little office, overlooking the fields of the workers and caretakers at the Scripture Mission compound? Is it lost somewhere in various emails and an endless array of "projects" (what a nebulous word!) that I work just as earnestly to plan as I do to complete them? Perhaps if I get enough done, I will really know some day.

Is it perhaps in the villages, when I feel privileged to take part in home visits to share the Word of God, or perhaps even a message? Is it in providing human care and Christ's mercy to those who attend medical clinics, speaking the Gospel to them, telling them not to worry or be afraid in the limited Swahili that I am trying to grow?

Escapism has lost its luster lately. When fiction can't take you away, or movies still thoughts of the future for no longer than their duration, the questions still remain. The big things. I have been thinking of a desk somewhere, maybe piled with textbooks and essays, dominated by my study Bible that thankfully continues to acquire bookmarks, dogeared pages, and notes in the margins.

Part of leaving was running away, yes. Running away to force myself to do the growing up that I was certain needed to happen, leaving things behind that I couldn't control in hopes that they would improve in some small way, thanks to my absence. Most of my leaving was hoping to find answers, answers to questions that have sat on my heart since high school, and looking to find God on the edge of the uncertain and the uncomfortable.

I will never forget six years ago when the thought entered my mind, when the seed was planted. When I confronted my first collegiate difficulties, then unaware I would overcome them, I had glibly blurted out what I thought was a suitable substitute to my mother, with whom I conferred over the phone. You know, something for just in case that whole college thing didn't work out. Something I thought I might be able to do. It really just came out of nowhere, like an instinctual response. "Well," she replied to my suggestion, "you'll still have to earn your bachelor's degree first." I lost myself in my undergraduate work and the ups and downs of entering adulthood somewhat eased by the rails and bumpers of undergraduate university life.

A few months before I graduated, I remember still, I was standing near Lamberton Hall on Lehigh University's Asa Packer Campus, contemplating the new growth of leaves that would come soon with spring. I can't remember if I said it audibly or so loudly in my head that I should have said it for the world: "I don't want to do this for the rest of my life. I should have been a teacher, or a counselor, or a pastor." I bit my tongue and put the thoughts away like I had done freshman year.

So much for that degree, so much for the advising of my faculty mentors, so much for the support and investment and expectations of my parents and family, so much for sense and planning, I thought. It got even better when I hadn't found a job or internship to follow up the achievement of my degree after a year of looking and tailoring my resume at the advice of a friend who warned me not to wait for God to dump a wonderful job in my lap. That summer, I learned what it was to beat my head against a wall, harder than I was told I had done as a child, only this time my forehead bore no bruises. Job applications came and went, most companies not even deigning to grace me with a reply that I hadn't met their lofty standards. I had some interviews, too. Some went well, and I decided no, I couldn't see myself in that office for more than three months. Some could have gone better. Still, I was just there. I remember the compliments and encouragement I received during this time, but they only made me feel more inadequate, because if the problem wasn't professional in nature, it had to be personal.

I took a retail job to start paying my student loans, noticing that as frustrating as my place of employ and my coworkers could be, the customers, the people whom I served, never failed to make my days. Even as what felt like the futility of hawking paper goods and wrapping gifts to the utmost of my limited wrapping skills began to weigh on my shoulders and my mind, nestling into my muscles as tension and disappointment with myself, people were talking to me.

At church they would ask "Have you ever considered ministry? Have you ever thought of being a pastor? Have you ever thought of seminary?" These things I held in my heart and mind, choosing to reply "I mean, yeah, I've thought of them before, sure," but justifying why I hadn't followed up on them only to myself. They had just wanted to make sure I had pondered such options, these people said, because they thought I could do those things and would be good at them. A woman who has known me since before birth, as she has happily reminded me, whom I consider to be both an adoptive grandmother and godparent, approached me one morning after worship, saying that she had something to tell me. She said she woke up in the middle of the night with a thought in her mind, just before this morning, and didn't know why but felt strongly compelled to ask me if I had ever considered ministry as a career choice. I almost didn't know what to say. Again, "yes, I've considered it," but this really left me surprised.

I ended up leaving that retail job to be a substitute teacher for a semester at my old high school, wondering why I had continually forgotten to listen to my parents on that suggestion. Just before starting subbing, I went on a missions trip to Chinandega, Nicaragua to supervise outdoor games for vacation Bible schools that a group from my Southeastern District would be sharing with Lutheran congregations in five villages. Feeling out of place with my limited Spanish, I was surprised to hear the father of three with whom I was running the games comment on how well he thought I worked with the kids and how they listened to me, regardless of our language barrier. More than a few people in this country overseas from my home asked me if I was a pastor, or what year I was in seminary.

Enough was enough, and I finally dumped this shaky burden on my pastor, with whom I was glad to be sharing a room on the trip. He tallied up the number of times I'd heard such comments, suggestions, and questions, and offered up that God was talking to me. Me being me, I argued with him. "Pastor Brian," I started, "I can see what you're saying, but God doesn't talk to me. God talks to OTHER people. I'm just doing the best I can here. I have no idea what business God would have talking to me, of all people." He told me to keep my mind, my eyes, and my ears open.We kept up the conversation with regular meetings when we returned to the States, and he maintained the growing tally. We further discussed this, and he finally found the excuse I had held on to for so long: "Pastor Brian, I'm not good enough." "Of course, you're not," he smiled. "That's why we have Jesus. It's not about being good enough, because if it was, you never would be." That changed things a bit.

Pastor Brian encouraged me to pursue this opportunity to serve as a missionary with the LCMS, and we agreed it would be a good way to better discern a career in ministry while using some skills from my bachelor's degree. It all fell pretty smoothly into place from there. There's a story (isn't there always, though), but the telling's not for this time.

As I fight what I would call the wisdom of man, mainly my own, distractions, my constant failings and battle to repent, and the daily burden of living life overseas, I'm working at staying in the Word, praying honestly, faithfully, and humbly, and searching for signs of the future. I have not been disappointed so far. The signs have been there, showing themselves through circumstances and people I never would have predicted. I am trying not to be like Gideon, asking God for just one more reason, just one more, and trying not to be like Peter, so zealous that I overestimate my own usefulness and abilities.

Humbly and gratefully, I ask for prayers. I ask for support. I took a stand in writing this because it's very personal to me, and because I take my career and serving others very seriously. I wanted to hold this in until I was more than halfway through serving my term, but I simply can't contain it anymore. I don't like to speculate wildly or vapidly, and yet that's all I feel I am capable of, given how little I know or how little I feel I am capable of while I continue to forge ahead in sharing the Gospel cross-culturally.