I love change, big crowds, strangers.  And I thrive on exciting new places and people and experiences.  In another time, I would have been a pirate, minus all that looting and pillaging and such.  I’d be the pirate who walked out on the plank beside the bad guys to be sure they repented before taking the plunge.  

And my biggest phobia?  Well, I don’t particularly care for heights, but that’s another story.  My biggest fear has always been mediocrity.  I hate it.  I get hyped up reading those scriptures where God calls us “a peculiar people,” and sets us apart for His purposes, and just imagining coming to the end of my life with the realization that I’d not taken any risks for Him, not gone out on a limb, not seen how far I could stretch or how much He could use me for, well, that’s just terrifying.

So logically, when God tugged at my heart hit me with a freight train about foreign missions, I questioned if that was His voice or just my adventure-around-every-corner, can’t-settle-for-normal, let’s-meet-new-people self.  I read all sorts of articles about missions while waiting for God to smack my husband with the freight train, and several spoke about being sure I heard from God, being sure it was His voice rather than my own wanderlust.  I prayed about that a lot, but the longer I’m in this thing, the less I’m sure it’s that easy to separate His calling from the adventurous spirit He put in me.  Let’s look a bit at Psalm 37:4,

This is one of those scriptures that seem so straightforward, but I’m seeing it in a new light lately.  What if instead of “Be cool with God and He’ll give you that thing you most want,” we read it as, “Find your joy in God, and He will plant desires—give you desires—in your heart.”  Meaning, the things that I most desire will be because HE gave me that longing.  He wants me to yearn for it.

Then was it that craving for adventure that drew me here?  I hope so.  After all, He’s not a tame lion.  He’s a God of crazy things, of the impossible, of dares and challenges and giants and fiery furnaces and walking on water. He's the God of two unqualified, independent, clumsy Americans wanting to reach folks a couple of decades younger than them, a few trillion miles from home.

So I have to believe that God gave me the wanderlust. He knew me in my Mama’s womb, designing me with His plan for my life in mind.  Without that crazy sense of adventure to drive me, I don’t know how I’d have stood being in a place where not much is familiar, where I’m terribly lost, and where I didn’t know a soul except those who came with me.  I don’t know how I’d look these people in the eye and convince them that I really do think their land is beautiful, that they are special and that I want to hear their stories so I can tell them mine.   So I can share about a God so loving that He plants desires in our hearts, then fulfills them as we find our delight in Him.

What desires has God given you?  Have you written them off as just "you," or have you accepted that He may have a purpose in your quirky peculiarities?