My Story - Part 1: Dreams

My story starts with a very young girl from a poor family.  She was idealistic and enthusiastic.  Life was hard, but this young girl had the world at her feet.  She wanted only three things in life:  1) to change the world, 2) to grow up and marry the man of her dreams, and 3) to have lots and lots of children.

This girl grew older and wiser.  She excelled in school and babysat for spending money.  Her dreams evolved.  She still wanted to change the world, but the dream became more focused.  She was going to be a physician in a third-world country.  She was going to run a mission deep in the jungle where no one had ever even seen a white man before, and she was going to heal bodies and save souls.  She still wanted to marry the man of her dreams.  She still wanted children, though "lots and lots" became two to four.

At age fifteen, our girl fell in love.  She and this boy had known each other most of their lives but did not become close until the summer between her freshman and sophomore years of high school.  They began dating in the fall and quickly became serious.  He was everything she had ever wanted, everything she had ever dreamed.  He was handsome, kind, and on fire for God.  He, too felt a call to the mission field.  The two were going to change the world together.  They were going to marry (he had proposed one winter night), and they were going to have a family.  They were aiming for three children, to be exact.

They were happy for a year and a half, and then......(there's always a "then," isn't there?)  And then, he decided that he was no longer called to the mission field and that he could not ask this girl to change her plans for him.  To say she was devastated would be akin to saying Atlas was merely strong.  Her heart was smashed into thousands of tiny pieces, and those pieces were scattered.  Some were lost.  In one instant, her whole world was changed.  Nothing was the same.  Her story - my story - was over, and yet, it was just beginning......