Direction

It was the most abrupt wake up slap in the face tonight, when my mom told me that I hadn't told my parents about my plans for overseas mission/ministry. I felt that surely I had, surely I had told my parents who are the ones funding my education, the ones who take care of me and feed me and love me. I mean, because I'd told everyone else already, right? Why did my parents not know? It breaks my heart. It breaks my mom's heart even more, probably, to know that they weren't in on the decision when it did come around. Here's the context: We'd been looking at the financial award status, which was basically up to $24K in loans (odd we didn't get any last year). She said we didn't want to borrow any more money from the school, to which I responded, why not, when they finally gave us the option? She said that we'd save it for graduate school, and here's when I stopped her. I said I had no such plans for graduate school. I said, maybe seminary, but not graduate school. Still confused, she asked me where I did plan to go. I said, overseas mission, which brought her to a stop and this is where this entire blog post stems from.

I mean, truly, I must be a colossal idiot to not have told my mom and dad about this. My parents had known that I wanted to go into ministry, but to Mom, overseas mission just seemed leagues away from ministry, I guess locally in the US. And I don't know, it makes me feel unbelief that I could have missed telling my parents about this. I'm so thankful that they've supported me this far, with those 2 years wiled away in engineering, then suddenly that jump to Psychology, a total 180 degree turn. I'm so thankful that when I confessed to my parents I wanted to follow my call to ministry with tears in my eyes my parents with smiling faces accepted that and urged me to push on. And now this, such a major oversight in my own eyes in just truckin' on but not giving them a heads up. To me it seems like not that much different, I mean it's still ministry that I am called to. But I didn't consider that my parents are .. my parents. As redundant as that statement sounds, it's true. They'd like to see me once in a while. I mean even at Rutgers I still see them at church every Sunday. When I'm home at the summer though we have quarrels over the way I choose to do things, I can tell my parents are happy to have the nest full again. If I go overseas, and this is the path I am called to, that means they'll see me less. For a mother not to see her son, a father not to see one who was once his little kid, that's more sorrowful than words can describe.

It seems I'll need a lot more prayer on this. The direction I am taking, the words I choose to say, my thoughts and actions, for they are not my own. In this past week I've been reading 1st Corinthians and already Paul has written twice: "you were bought at a price" (1 Corinthians 6:20 NIV). Already twice this has convicted me, and now thrice.