Today is the big day!

After six month's of Lawren's absence, today she comes home. Her plane is scheduled to arrive in Huntsville about 8:30 tonight. It is a day that around the first of the year I thought would never arrive. Lawren has known for several years that the Father was calling her to Europe to attend a YWAM DTS...Youth With a Mission Discipleship Training School. Her lecture phase took place at a pioneer school in Berlin while their outreach occurred in  Chiang Mai, Thailand.

For as long as I can remember we have talked about missions...I am not sure why. Maybe a couple of factors attributed to this mission mindset. First I grew up in a traditional Southern Baptist church where we annually prayed for home missions and foreign missions, took up a Lottie Moon Christmas offering and either attended or taught GA's Girls In Action and Acteens. I took my girls to "Mom and Me Mission Camp" every year at Worldsong in Birmingham until they were old enough to go to week long camps by themselves. Also, during my years of Bible Study Fellowship, my teaching leader oftened referred to some of the great missionaries of the past who helped shape our world. Furthermore, because many of our homeschool years were spent reading great stories, we read about missionaries.

On our first mission trip to Poland three and half years ago, God planted a seed in my daughter to return. She sometimes patiently waited to graduate and launch herself into all her heart was crying for.  During our time in Ruda Slaska , Poland, while the Father was revealing Himself to me as Rescuer...past, present, and future, He was stirring the heart of my beloved daughter to Him.

...the Lord knows how to rescue godly men (Pam) from trials and to uphold the righteous...2 Peter 2:9

The first few months of the DTS weren't too bad....Thanks to the technological age we live in we were able to talk via Skype on the computer weekly. I was even able to receive occasional texts via her ipod during the week. I simply cannot imagine what a parent must have undertaken allowing their children to take off years ago without any communication other than rare letters via snail mail. Even Thanksgiving Day was spent in front of the computer with each family member spending time with Lawren.

Once the outreach began the communication lessened which became harder for mom since their were tummy troubles in Thailand...two hospital visits and down time at the base. Probably for mom the loneliness was the hardest around the first of the year, once the hustle and bustle of outreach here and the holidays ended. Because I was talking less to Lawren, I missed our long conversations...her sharing her heart about something the Lord spoke to her that week or whatever struggle she was encountering.

It was then...with communication limited, I realized why missionaries ask for prayer more than money.  Did you know that YWAM staff does not receive a paycheck? I knew Lawren had to raise her own support to go over there but it never occurred to me that the people staffing the bases...pouring themselves into young adults from all over the world...day in and day out...then trusting the Father to get them to outreach and provide daily for their families..were also depending on others for their livelihood. That is not normal.

Lawren's time in both Europe and Thailand  has been richly rewarding and continued to affirm the love for missions that the Father has placed in her heart. You can follow her blog at www.lawrenelizabeth.blogspot.com. I am sure there will be many more stories to come from her recent experiences.

In The Ministry of Motherhood, the author conveys, "Jesus' work in a person's life has always begun with a call to leave behind the goals, purposes, and distractions of this world and to say yes to a whole new life, a new way of thinking. 'Follow me' is what he told the disciples as he recruited them. And they did, abandoning their fishing nets, their tax-collector's moneybags, their permanent homes, their everyday duties and pleasures. And they never went back. Sure they still did a little fishing from time to time! But once they made the choice to follow Jesus, their lives were forever changed. They never returned to 'normal'."

Furthermore, the author relates, "If I seek to inspire my children to understand and own God's purposes for their lives, that means they will grow up with a different set of instructions than people in the world have...God is not measuring them by how much money they make, what kind of car they drive, or how big a house they are able to buy."

"It is Jesus who calls them just as He calls me..what a privilege...(completey humbling) to have been included in bringing about this miracle of calling. What a great idea God had to use mothers as a part of that process....of helping to inspire our children to God's purposes and walking alongside them as they learn to make the choice of leaving the world."

When I ponder sitting in front of this screen that the God of the universe saw my little nest situated here alongside the Tennessee River in Morgan County, Alabama....and saw our hearts loving Him while still trudging through the daily grind of distractions, busyness, not to mention daily battles of the flesh, and chose us...chose us for greatness....plucked my little girl up, carried her overseas, stretched her to the point she felt like breaking, but treated her with lovingkindness while growing her heart even bigger...touching the world with  my daughter....

Wow, what a sweet momma moment....

Many thanks to each of you who have been praying regularly for Lawren and our family. I am overwhelmed by the faithfulness of God to produce fruit in  the lives of our families. I am so thankful to God for what I see Him doing in and through Lawren's life, It gives me great hope to continue planting seeds in the lives of my other four children that they too may know the secrets of the kingdom of God.

Not many are called to overseas foreign missions and that is ok. However, as children of God we are all disciples and called in Matthew 28 to go and make disciples..wherever we are..at work, school, play, in our homes, wherever the Father has you today. And the command comes with a promise that I love...I will be with you  always even to the ends of the age.