The Best Gift

I received an early birthday gift last night. It was not wrapped and it was not handed to me, but it was the greatest gift I could have asked for today. For the past couple of months I have really struggled knowing where the Lord was taking me. I was really aiming towards graduating and going into missions of some sort. There were a few different ideas going through my head of what I might be interested in doing, but it really didn't seem like God was giving me any clear direction in that area. My parents went to a marriage conference last weekend that Scott and Deborah Brown (from NCFIC) did for our church. While there, my Mom had talked a lot to Mrs. Brown about me and my frustration with knowing where God was leading me. Mrs. Brown really gave my Mom lots of advice about what I can do and how I can continue getting an education and being a missionary right here in my home.
I won't lie, when Mom got home and told me everything, my brain went on automatic overdrive. It was actually almost frustrating to me. I knew what my Mom and Mrs. Brown were saying. I've watched, "Return of the Daughters," and I've read all the books, but when I would look at my life, I never saw how I would fit into that role. I would look at other dear girls around me that were staying at home and living under their Dad's protection, but I just never saw them as being me. Don't get me wrong, they lead beautiful lives, just very, very different lives. This really frustrated me because I do want to remain under my Dad's protection, but this culture we live in does not make it very easy and it is especially hard to know what God is calling you  as a young person to do.
So, my Mom had seen a poster at Culvers on Monday night advertising a bluegrass concert at a nearby church. She didn't write anything down she just remembered the church name. For some very strange reason, she went home and went on this goose chase trying to find the info for this concert. We shouldn't have been able to go to that concert. With as crazy as our lives have been, and with the rain.......it just shouldn't have happened. But God somehow got my Mom and I out the door and to the church. The concert was actually a Christian school fundraiser, but the family that did the concert was a homeschool family with 10 children. As we found out, even the Bontrager's found it humorous that a Christian school would have a homeschool family like theirs do a fundraiser for a school. (Their family actually puts on the Homeschool Family Camp with the Wissman family and their oldest daughter has worked with Sarah Mally at Bright Lights conferences.)
The concert was so amazing. God has really worked beautifully through their family in their music and in their lives. As I sat listening to their music and watching their children I was very suddenly struck by their oldest daughter. I watched her and listened when they introduced their family and suddenly God showed me what it would look like for me to be a stay at home daughter living under my Dad's protection. I cannot describe to you the feeling that went through me since never before have I seen something quite that clearly, but it was as if God just dropped my future in my lap.
The way Chelsey Bontrager served her family was such a testimony of what God can do through daughters. Their whole family was a testimony!

I wanted to see what it would look like for me to serve in my home. God let me see someone that I could see myself in.
I wanted to know how to get my family to use our singing for God's glory. He sent a family that has done so and I saw how the older children taught the younger children music in such a beautiful way.
I wanted to start memorizing Scripture, something I have really gotten away from. Their 16 year old son has a goal to memorize the whole Bible by the time he is 20. He memorizes 5 chapters a week. If that's not inspiring I don't know what is.
I wanted to know how I could be a missionary from my home. The Bontragers spent the whole evening sharing the Gospel in some way. I also bought a book by Grace Mally on witnessing that looks so full of Godly wisdom in the area of witnessing.

So much info hit my head last night. Talking with Mrs. Bontrager and their oldest daughter was delightful. I cannot express my thankfulness and gratitude for them. God has given me a vision and a goal far bigger than I ever thought. I finally got a chance to see what it would look like for me to serve the Lord at home, just as my parents have always hoped I would.

Friends, seek the Lord. He WILL give you the answers that you long to know, but He has to do it in His timing. Trust me, God had to allow some pretty frustrating circumstances to break me down so that He could give me these answers. Wait on the Lord, He will give you a new song.