No, Thank You.

Wake up. Get my kids up for school and go down stairs and proceed to pack their lunches. Feed the dog. Make the family breakfast. Kiss my husband goodbye and slip a note in his briefcase that tells him I love him. Drop the kids off at school. Go to work. Run errands. Pick the kids up from soccer practice. Help them do their homework. Make dinner. Go to a PTA meeting before I come home for family game night. Put the kids to bed. My husband contemplates fixing the hinges on the door of our white picket fence this weekend.

But before I get to this particular point in my life, I need to first take the steps to ensure I will be comfortableand sucessful. So...I go to college. Get involved in a couple of clubs. Become more involved at church. Get the "college experience" and a useful degree in something like business. I graduate. Get engaged. Get married. Honeymoon somewhere tropical. My husband and I buy a dog and name him "scooter." See above for more detailed everyday schedule.

If this is dream of the life ahead of me, I would like to respectfully say "No, thank you." That cannot possibly be the climax of a life I am called to live. Where's the room for God? Where's the room for His movement? If I live the safe and comfortable life above, I am living a life of obligation, compartmentalizing God, making him fit society's dreams and hopes. And the reality is, we are all fooling ourselves if we think God is totally fine with being fit into a Sunday service and maybe a Wednesday night home group and then maybe an added couple week missions trip one summer. I want to do something more with my life. And really, I guess I would be fine with only living the life of the first two paragraphs if my life was my own, but it's not. I want to follow Jesus radically so badly. I don't want to live a life of comfort and security and self-betterment that everyone seems to be condoning. No, getting a business degree is not of the devil, and having a picket fence in your front yard does not make you boring, and God bless you if you have found a husband that really loves you and kids that can create play-doh sculptures like no one else in their kindergarten class.

Truth is, I would actually like a couple of those things as well. But I do not want those to be my dreams. I want to dream and hope for bigger and better things for the kingdom of God. I want to see people healed, people come to know and love God with reckless abandonment. I want to see great things. I would absolutely adore having a family one day. But there has got to be more. The life I originally described in this post cannot be all I can hope and dream for. God has so much bigger plans for all of us than just getting a good job and snagging a spouse and the yearly bonus. That's all self gratifying. I want to see the greatest things of God. I want to gratify God.