(Continued from yesterday’s post)

When I heard my name called, I snapped out of my jumbled thoughts about work and life, in general, and I looked around to see if there was someone I hadn’t met yet who had my name. A couple of people looked at me, and it quickly became apparent that I was the only “Angela” there.

The speaker followed the others’ glances and looked my way, asking if I was Angela. I nodded, and she asked if I’d come wait for her to finish praying with the person she’d been talking to before she interrupted herself. I went down and sat on the front row, wondering what was going on.

After the other person went back to their seat, the speaker waved me over to her, so I went. She put a hand on my shoulder, looked me in the eyes and said: “Angela, God wants you to know that he will be your father; he will be your brother; he will be your husband; he will be your friend. And, he’s going to take you to a place that you’ve never been to minister to people you’ve never met, and you don’t need to be afraid to go, because he is with you.”

She said a few things after that, but I was so stunned that I don’t really remember anything except her first couple of sentences. What did it mean? I wondered. I had doubts about going overseas, but I had not shared any of them publicly. I believed that God was calling me, and yet I felt pressure from my family (indirectly or otherwise), as well as a sense of obligation not to ditch my job after just a few months. Besides, it was a volunteer position, and I had student loans to pay. How would I make ends meet?

I had spoken to the pastor and his wife about the opportunity to reapply for the overseas assignment not very long before this happened, so I just assumed that he had said something to the speaker about me. (Why he would mention little ol’ me, who wasn’t even a leader in the church, was beyond me, but it’s the only thing I could think of.) I went to him after the service and asked him what he’d told her about me. He looked dumbfounded and said that he had not said anything to her, about anyone in the church. I realized then that I’d been a part of something really spectacular.

I also knew that somehow, someway, God was going to make it possible for me to go overseas. I wondered about the different relationships that the woman mentioned in her comments to me. I got along ok with my dad, and my brother and I got along as well as siblings do. There was no animosity in either of those relationships, that I could think of at that time. As for the husband thing, well, I had started dating an old college friend long-distance, and we had begun discussing the future, but nothing was in stone, by any means. I had a couple of close friends, but I was feeling pretty isolated and lonely where I was, so I didn’t know what the reference to God being my friend meant, either.

The pieces fell into place, and I moved across the big ocean a few months later. I had my parents sell my car to help pay for my student loans while I was away, and although it was a struggle, I scraped together enough to make ends meet. It was an amazing experience, even though I only stayed a semester. Then, in the year after I returned to the states, life got topsy-turvy in some very good and very rotten ways: my parents divorced, my brother fractured his neck in a roll-over automobile accident, and I married that long-distance boyfriend. Still, I wondered what God was trying to say.

Life has a way of making time seem like it is flying by, and one day you look back and wonder: What did it all mean?

(To be continued in Part 3, tomorrow)