I was 23.
April 2008.
Nearly a year of wonderings and wanderings after graduating from college.
I was ready.
Ready to spread my wings and fly,
ready to take a chance.
In 2007 I graduated with a degree in music. In my young, naivete I thought I would immediately be hired in full-time music ministry and that church job offers would simply flood in as soon as I walked across the stage with my diploma.
(I was wrong, by the way).
That summer I travelled to India for a two-month long mission trip. In many ways, that trip changed my life. My first time overseas, my first time fully immersed in an eastern culture, and the first time I really caught a glimpse of life abroad serving a God who isn’t American. A God of all nations.
I returned home more sick than I’ve ever been in my life, and still had no job and no direction for my life.
The difficult months that followed shook me to my core: extreme culture shock, depression, meandering and wanderings… but then in April of 2008, everything changed. You see, when I returned from India, my team spent several days in Bangkok, Thailand debriefing. I had a distant feeling in my heart, a feeling that I would return to Thailand one day.
Ten years ago, in April 2008, I interviewed for a Music Teacher position in Bangkok, Thailand. A few weeks later, I boarded a small airplane with 2 large suitcases (and a very heavy carry on) and moved to the other side of the world.
I didn’t know a single soul.
But that decision – that chance. It changed my life forever.
The friendships forged during that year forever changed me, the students I taught showed me what compassion looked like with hands and feet, and living in another culture taught me how to be empathetic.
That chapter of my life opened up doors for me to later serve in full-time Worship ministry, and the relationships there inspired me to pursue seminary. Many of the co-teachers I taught with are still my friends today.
The thing about taking chances is this: when the Holy Spirit of God prompts us to take steps of faith, or “chances” in our human thinking, the greater chance to take is to ignore that prompting and taking the wider, easier path.
I’m so glad I took that chance.
India, June 2007
Kolkata, India, July 2007
Thailand, October 2008
Our street, Nonthaburi, Bangkok, Thailand
somehow beautiful 