Entry #2 - Obedience Changes How People Look at You

and so we continue with the operator's manual for this journey of obedience....  see What They Didn't Tell You for the background information


#2 - PEOPLE WILL LOOK AT YOU DIFFERENTLY


All of a sudden we are no longer ordinary people - we are looked at differently.  We heard a call on our lives to missions and moved forward in obedience.  We don't see our call to move to Spain as anything greater than someones call to share Christ in a secular work place, start a refugee ministry, serve in a nursing home, take in a foster child, teach a Sunday School class, etc.  We truly believe that God has a unique call on each person's lives and we just happen to be blessed with a call to Spain.

Yet, with our obedience to move towards Spain people have set us apart.  Repeatedly we are asked how could we have such great faith.  Nearly daily we are told that we are doing something that they couldn't do.  We often hear how people wish they could step out in similar obedience.  People are amazed when we say we struggle with the same questions or are encouraged by their walks of obedience.

Another difference that seems to have come with this "set apartness" is that people no longer share about their struggles with us any longer.  I thought I was imagining this - that relationships really had not changed this much already, but last week this was confirmed.  I asked someone about an on going situation in their life and they said "oh, I was embarrassed to tell you I was struggling with this still, you are giving it all up and going to Spain and this seems so trivial in relation to that."  Do you know that I struggle every day with daily issues in my life just as much now as before we began the journey to Spain?

I was talking with a missionary friend that lives in another part of the world (name and location kept out of the blog for protection of her ministry) last week.  She shared the same experience.  She shared that she actually felt like people put her up on some pedestal and that she was unreachable and thus relationships changed way before she expected and long before she left the country.

Know that I am no super Christian.  I struggle every day to focus on what God has called me to do.  I want to fight Him and do it myself.  A lot of days I have to die to self more than once.  I'm not the perfect wife, mom, or employee (just ask them, I am sure they will agree).   I'm still just ordinary Cindy doing something a little out of the ordinary.