I’ve got a lot going for me.
If I’m being honest with you, I can’t hold that back. The Lord has blessed me in a bajillion different ways: I’m going to school for literally 1/10 of the cost of most Americans. I’m pursuing a degree in a field that I stinking love. I have a family full of people who love me to death. I have a job at one of the greatest locations of one of the most efficiently-run and highest-rated companies in the world, and I’m being trained to work in the department of that company in which I originally wanted to work the most. I have friends who love me and are there to support me and help me when I’m down. I had the craziest opportunity to serve the Lord at Sky Ranch as a counselor this past summer. And above it all I have a Savior who loves me so much He literally died for me. And you’d think with all that going for me, it’d be pretty easy to stay peppy.
But it’s not.
I feel like I should be somewhere else. Specifically? Sky Ranch. If I were able to describe how wonderful the summer of 2015 was, I would do it, but its brilliance was so beyond my ability to comprehend that to try and describe it would do nothing but drag it down. The Lord moved in such a magnificent way–it was, and still is, impossible for me to recall it all, let alone describe any of it adequately. I found a new kind of home in Van–one where the people are constantly pushing each other toward the Cross and where Jesus is proclaimed in literally everything that happens. That kind of community doesn’t happen often. In fact, it rarely happens at all, which is why coming back to St. Louis and being out of that community directly is hitting me so intensely.
Don’t get me wrong–I’m still connected. GroupMe can be a curse of an app at times but when you’re 700-1,000 miles away from everyone, it makes a huge (good) difference. I don’t feel like I abandoned anyone or that anyone abandoned me–it’s simply that the Lord’s time for me at Sky is over, for now. He closed the gates for the summer of ’15 and I have to be okay with that until He reopens them for me in the summer of ’16. Problem is, I’m totally not okay with that. I miss my Sky family. I miss the beauty of seeing a child’s eyes light up when you tell him how proud you are of him when he finally listens and shows you Jesus in his actions. I miss the joy of watching my boys step up and take leadership when they were asked to, or maybe even when they were not, and seeing them be the spiritual leaders Jesus wants them to be. I miss the brand-new fire in a young man’s eyes when he decided to follow Jesus and be a child of the king. I miss the beautiful, yet at the same time horribly ugly, harmony that the staff had as we tried to scrap together our utmost for His highest and serve Him well. I miss Sky Ranch. But Jesus doesn’t have me there right now.
He’s got me in St. Louis, in a city where racial issues and poverty are tearing the fabric of society apart and are likewise showing the kids of the city the absolute worst example of manhood and womanhood that they could possibly see; in a school where His name just isn’t spoken unless it’s a joke or an exclamation, and the majority of the students know absolutely zero of His love for them and the reality of His deity. Looking at those two alone should motivate me enough to live on mission and be excited for the calling I have here, but I’m struggling. I’m failing.
If you’ve made it this far, I apologize for the depravity of my tone. I know it sounds like I feel more miserable than any person who’s ever lived, and to be honest, sometimes I feel that way. But the reality is that as I write, I can honestly acknowledge that I know this desire to be at Sky Ranch right now is a distraction. It would be one thing if I was simply excited for next summer, which I am, but that’s not all. I want to be there now, but that’s not where the Lord wants me at this present moment, so it is therefore a distraction. There are at least 2 major reasons Jesus wants me to serve Him here specifically and to desire serving Him elsewhere so strongly would be a foolish mistake.
“And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?”
Esther 4:14
This one verse is gonna have to be my life song for the next two semesters if I want to be the vessel that Jesus wants to use me as. Esther was dedicated to serving the Lord. And by dedicated I mean 1,000,000,000,000 percent. This chick was on FIRE, and in this moment, she was starting to lose her flame. Not because she didn’t want to serve God, just because she wanted to serve Him in a different way than He wanted her to. That’s just as dangerous as not serving Him, because if the enemy can get our focus on the wrong thing, whether we be motivated by service to Him or not, he’s already won.
The point is this–I was planted in Texas for 3 months. That much is true, but now I’ve been transplanted and I need to either bloom here and produce fruit or shrivel up and die. The only real answer is the former, but I’m not gonna be able to just make it happen. I’m going to need to empty myself, beg Jesus to scrape out my desires and fill me with nothing but His. Honestly there’s nothing I can do to focus myself except plead with the Lord to pour out His love for these people into me. If I want to bloom where I’ve been transplanted, all I can do is let Him work.
When that happens, miracles will occur.
Ty Hirsch 