My Purpose: Flashback to 2010

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Nursing School Graduation
It's funny what you run across as you go through papers looking for things. Today while I was trying to organize the somewhat-controlled-chaos of all the various papers for the several Wycliffe tasks I have going on (partnership development, work permit applications, and training preparation, etc...) I ran across something I had written 4 years ago this June while I was in my Junior/Senior year of nursing school. It really grabbed my attention because it reminded me why I am doing what I'm doing. Often, it's easy for me to get caught up in the "task" of things and forget the purpose of those things. God was faithful today to cross my paths with this "Purpose Statement" if you will, that I wrote 4 years ago...


Teaching Wound Care in Papua, Indonesia
My Purpose
Oh how can I tell you in a paper what burns in my heart? I long, with every fiber of my being to touch those who are suffering with the love of Christ. I long to alleviate their suffering with gentle and skilled hands and a willing heart. How can I begin to express that I have a desire that consumes and controls all that I do: to obey my Savior and follow in his footsteps in service to the poor, the lost, the dying, the sick of this world? How can words begin to describe the deep ache, the gnawing that drives me, in a headlong dash toward what most would call a wasted life? How? How? How? I cannot. Words are paltry and meaningless when trying to describe the love of Jesus that has been planted inside of your heart and is spilling out into all you do, suffusing every portion of your being. It is too vast, too incomprehensible. This is “a loyalty sworn, not a burning for a moment.” This is not the bleeding heart of a sappy student wanting to feel better about themselves by checking the box, holding an orphan and skipping a latte for a week to send a few dollars to ease a guilty conscious. No. This is a heart that is set, that has been given purpose and a drive. A heart with as mission that knows, with everything within in that those without hope are its destination and purpose for living. No. Words cannot begin to express that kind of purpose. It is shrouded in the mystery of the glorious grace of Jesus Christ. Only through him will you begin to understand that path and only through him will you be enveloped and swept away in that kind of purpose. That is where this heart longs to be and where it longs to bring others.

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