It's about time I follow up on that last post. Sorry it's taken me so long to write it out. The past week and a half has been filled with some school activities, house-repairing parties (one of which will be starting Tuesday and ending sometime before the weekend), reading and helping out at home (a hobby of mine ;)
One of the school activities was reading the Life Purpose Booklet. The book was OK. Most of it was stuff I already knew, had already done was in the process of walking out, but reading the examples in the back helped to clarify some of my own longings, and passions (- a calling?)
My Life Purpose Statement looks like the first-draft that it is. If I try writing beyond the first draft, though, I find that I veer off into all sorts of tangents, bunny trails (dare I say deer paths?) and I soon lose sight of what it is I really feel God has designed my heart for.
I started off this fall looking for a way to broaden my platform - somehow make what I was doing more public through participating in the Miss USA beauty pageant. For the most part the feedback I get is incredibly supportive and affirming, "Aha! That's a great idea!" Eyes light up. "Ooh, you'll do good at that," big awarding smiles... Affirmation, affirmation, affirmation. It was a brilliant! A truly wonderful idea. Now, I do know, for at least some people, that these statements were stated because my peers, my friends, my elders, the people I look up to (even when they are younger than I) believe in me, believe in who I am, and believe in what God is doing... but God has been calling me somewhat deeper.
Something about the whole pageant philosophy/ idea never exactly settled right with me. There was something that just wasn't right; I wasn't exactly sure what was wrong, exactly. I had a general idea, but as to specifics? At least, this is the best way I can explain it...
After prayer with my parents (for the second time), and contemplation, meditation and in the Word time, things began to fall into place a little more clearly.
Upon completing the Life Purpose Booklet, God began to straighten out those jumbled thoughts in my head (there really is something extremely helpful about putting thoughts on paper). For the longest time I've know "what I want to do," what I want the "beginning of the end point" to be. But how, exactly, has been somewhat of a mystery to me. I have not ever been exactly sure how to get to where I want to go... but then, as I was finishing up the book, it hit me, I am doing what I need to be doing...
Better yet God is helping me to do what HE wants me to be doing, what He wants me to get done, how HE wants me to walk it out...
It's AMAZING!!
It's not big and fantabulous, like a wonderful, girly, Cinderella-story beauty pageant, but it's what needs to be done.
My deepest hearts desire isn't to have an international, or even national, or even state-wide, women's ministry where I travel around speaking, singing, dancing... whatever the medium! That's simply not my personality. There are other things, deeper things, I want to get done...
This is an amazing life-calling, life-ministry, and I have some girl-friends who I really do believe are called to this ministry and are walking it out as we speak, but that's not my cup-a-tea ;)
February 2010 was the first year in five consecutive years that I hadn't hosted a Valentines Tea for the young ladies that I know.
The tea started out as a way to get together with a bunch of girl-friends and do something ridiculously girly in the middle of the cold, desolate, freezing, icy winter. This progressed into a protocol study ending in a Christmas tea-celebration and then Valentines party. Which, in turn, progressed into a regular get-together, then Valentines party... progressing into a fashion show-slumber-party, then Valentines "Dreams" tea-party- study... which progressed into....
SO many ideas!
My original dream was to have a retreat, over the weekend, for young ladies regarding femininity - being the young women God has called you to be, seeking who He wants you to be, applying what you were to who you are now to expand His kingdom and bring Him glory. The problem was that there are so many things that really do need to be squeezed in, that the idea expanded into a week-long event, growing into a month-long (sporadically) event, extending into a year-long... I mean... once-a-month event, stretching into a four-year-plan... I mean...
You get the picture ;) There is so much that is applicable to this, so much that really does need to be shared and proclaimed to women of my generation and younger!
There is an incredible amount of ideas and things that need to be shared, but it's just not all feasible for any human being... doing what I can do in the time that is possible is what's required. Be faithful to what God has called (continue doing what I have been doing), the rest is up to God!
