It’s the smack-dab middle of July and I’m sitting by the living room window in my apartment as the sun glints through the blinds, warming this space.
Last Thursday night, this room was filled with people—one in the chair I’m sitting in, three on the couch, two on the floor, one perched on the stairs, and four more of us huddled around the coffee table in fold-out camp chairs. Every Thursday evening after our closing Ocoee Outreach service of the week, we gather somewhere—Shake Shack, a church classroom, Baskin Robbins, or last week, in mine and my roommate Nicole’s living room. We share ice cream or watermelon and debrief the week.
Some weeks in ministry are better than others. Last week was one of those weeks. More than one person shared how God spoke life over them and how they were encouraged by both outsiders and people in the community. Tears were shed by several (myself included). But a uniting thread in all of our stories from the week was a reminder of the why—if there was doubt in any of our minds about the reason we were spending our summer on construction sites sharing PB&J’s and Bible stories, our encounters this week confirmed the calling.
What partially brought about my tears last night was the personal testimony I felt beating against my chest—that bubbling sensation of fullness and love and passion that I was exactly where Jesus wanted me, simultaneously acknowledging that my life would look very different today if I had never participated in Ocoee Outreach last summer. What began as a last-ditch effort to find a job looks today
like a lifelong calling unearthed.
For the past five weeks of the summer, I’ve felt a little bit useless in this job. I’m okay at leading lunchtime devotionals and initiating conversation with homeowners, but my actual construction capabilities are still lacking (though I know more than I did last summer). I hadn’t had very many opportunities to connect with families in the community, which is half my job. But then, this week in Charleston, Tennessee, I met Ms. Audrey.
Ms. Audrey is in her mid-fifties and has lived in her little plot of Charleston all her life. The railroad tracks are literally a foot from her property, but she remains unbothered. She’s had two hip replacements but still has great difficulty moving about, relying on a walker outside her home. The ground beneath her front door is completely covered in bulky tree roots that cannot be removed, so one of our projects was to construct a wheelchair ramp at her side door. Me and Nolan, my co-missionary for the week, approached her front door on Monday morning to introduce ourselves, and as soon as she opened her door, a little boy with caramel-colored skin and curly brown hair poked his head out, Ms. Audrey holding his hand from behind. She explained that she watches her grandchildren during the day while her son works remotely. Every day, we knocked on Ms. Audrey’s door, offering lunch, inviting her to our devotionals, or just providing a means of connection and conversation.
At lunch on Wednesday, I led the group in a short Scripture reading and began asking discussion questions. Ms. Audrey spoke up and shared a tearful, compelling testimony of her battle with chronic illness and how she has leaned on the Lord to be her strength when she lacks little. I kept eye contact with her the entire time as she poured out her heart onto her brand-new plywood deck, and as streaks ran down her face, I could feel tears welling in my own eyes. I was so glad the rest of my group was present to hear her testimony, but it truly felt like Ms. Audrey and I were the only two people in the room. She asked us to pray for her, and for the next two days, she continually spoke about the power of that prayer.
On that Thursday afternoon, I stood precariously perched on top of a very steep roof of a house in the middle of downtown Cleveland, my friend Noah lining up ridge caps as I wielded an air gun, sinking nails into the hot shingles. I looked down at the rest of the crew on the ground, spread across the backyard chatting and laughing with one another and the homeowners, and I thought, I cannot believe this is my life.
What clings to me from this ministry is knowing that God could use someone like me—someone who has very little experience building something tangible with her hands—to reach into a stranger’s life. Ms. Audrey told me that she could see Jesus in us from the moment Nolan and I knocked on her door Monday morning.
I had this insane revelation on that roof, one that shook me to my core and completely took me by surprise. I don’t want a white-picket-fence, two-kids-by-35 life. I think I’ve known that for a while now, but this moment felt different. This summer has been a great season of preparation for my time with YWAM in the fall, but more than that, Ocoee Outreach has opened the door to a different way of living.
I just finished reading Shauna Niequist’s I Guess I Haven’t Learned that Yet, and in it, she writes about the experience of moving her family of four to the middle of Manhattan in her forties. She describes the judgement she faced from friends, people who were astonished that she and her husband would uproot their very comfortable lives in the Midwest to take on the Big Apple in midlife. “There are a million ways to lead a meaningful life,” Niequist writes. “But when you’ve lived only one way for a very long time, the messaging gets really loud, and anything different starts to seem suspect.”
Growing up in the South, and then later moving to the Buckle of the Bible Belt (Cleveland, Tennessee) for college, it was pretty rare to hear of anyone doing anything after graduation other than settling down and starting a family. You might move around a bit in your twenties, traveling or working, but eventually, you end up right where you started. There are exceptions, of course, but unfortunately, those aren’t the stories being told as often.
I don’t need to tell you that there’s nothing wrong with settling down after graduation, or at any point in life. As Niequist so wisely records, there are a million ways to live a meaningful life. But I mourn the fact that we often leap at the opportunity to fulfill the American Dream before leaping into the arms of Jesus—taking risks, stepping outside of our comfort zones, moving to a foreign country with zero expectations apart from God’s transformative power in our lives and the lives of others.
God can transform lives overseas and in our hometowns, in a bustling foreign city or in your local grocery store. I’m not saying we all need to be missionaries abroad. But I do believe with all my heart that we are called to be missionaries where our feet are planted and wherever they carry us. Ocoee Outreach has taught me that in whatever stage of life I am in, from singleness to possible marriage and motherhood, I am on mission. And that doesn’t cease—ever.
Today, though, I am convinced that I will never be swayed to embrace a predictable white picket fence life—that is, unless I am inviting people inside that white picket fence, practicing hospitality, vulnerability, and community.
But even still, I can’t picture a fence.
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