What would we have done if they would have never told us we were world changers?

One of my people, my soul sisters, Joanna sent me some midnight thoughts after a particular rough in my head Friday.

And intertwined in the beautiful words and truths and sentences I had to agree with, with gritted teeth, was the stark reminder that we both grew up in a generation of Christianity and youth group and camp themes that told us over and over again that we were going to change the world.

That it was our job to go out and be his hands.

To go where He sent us.

That we were the generation that was going to go into all the world.

And I didn’t realize until I stopped and pondered Joanna’s words how much that heavy statement affected me.

How much I carry the fact that I’m supposed to change things, that I’m supposed to make a difference with each day.

How I feel like I fail every day I don’t feel like I’ve made a difference.

To quote my beautiful friend in her words to me:

“It’s not pressure. It’s the realization that being born for such a time as this is not a mandate to live up to.”

As a millennial growing up in a high school youth group, who went to a Christian university, who has worked at a lot of churches, who did a year long mission among other missions trips, the phrase “born for such a time as this” has always felt like a challenge, something I need to meet up with.

Something telling me I was strong enough to be stronger.

Not something saying I had the things I needed right then, right where I am, as I was. 

I remember youth conferences and Mexicali themes and university chapels and it was always the altar call of “who will go?”

They told us to go and when we weren’t able to and when we didn’t know how to translate it into our normal lives, something happened.

We lacked the ability to feel enough.

I’m one of the “lucky” ones.

I went.

I’ve been 14 countries on mission trips. I’ve preached in prisons, taught Bible stories in the middle of a village in Mozambique.

I’ve prayer walked in Thailand and Swaziland and Peru.

I’ve taught English in Cambodia and China and Malaysia (because English IS easy- iykyk)

I’ve cooked and cared for widows and orphans.

I’ve been proposed marriage in at least 4 countries and kicked out of public transport when I said no.

I’ve went.

But now I stay.

I think that’s part of the reason I always feel like running would help. 

Like going somewhere I’m unknown, unneeded and uninvolved would help.

Because they told us to go.

They told us to change the world.

They never told us to stay.

So, now what?

How do we, a generation who has disentangled from a faith that told us to go, to change the world, to move- how do we stay?

And what if the world we were always meant to change was our own?

In the smallest semblance of being.

What if we were meant to change the world by staying but they just never got to that part?

What if we were meant to move in the same space.

What if the going was the daily thing we do.

What if it didn’t have to be a big deal. 

What if they never told us to go change the world?

What would we have done?

Well.

I guess, as much as I don’t want to say this, we should do the opposite:

So, let’s stay.

With love,

Meg