"Send me" ...out of the brokenness I will serve You

September 1999.... this was the first time someone in my family, namely my now Ex-husband, went on a Mission trip with our church... he had accepted Christ just a few months before and was now off to help build a church in Gabon, Africa...

the kids were a lot younger and the fact that he was going to serve God so far away made my heart soar.... I was so excited and scared at the same time..

in the meantime I went on a trip to the Ukraine, a year later, he on two trips to Ecuador, my oldest to Nicaragua, the middle one to Mexico twice.. exciting and scary, all the same... wonderful growing experiences for all of us..

then the unthinkable happened.. 

and this morning, I was at the church sending off my youngest on her Mission trip to the Dominican Republic.. just me and her..

so glad she went, because after her father had not only left us but also "his faith" behind, she went through some rough time regarding her own beliefs..

I remember one day when she had one of her now so familiar anger outbursts, I asked her if she was also angry at God.. this is what she said:

"I am not angry at God, I just don't think He can do much.. look at what happened with you and Daddy, you prayed , you went for counselling, you tried everything and he still left"

wow, talk about being hit right into the middle of your heart, where it hurts the most...

struggling the way she did we decided later for her to stay home last fall and do homeschooling, which meant, since I was at the church 3 days a week working at the Pregnancy Center, that she too was hanging out there..

God used our prayer times in the morning, her getting to know the volunteers at the Center and a great Youth pastor and his daughter reaching out to her, to bring her back into the "fold"...

so today, as sad as I was that I was representing a broken family in the midst of all those "real" families, I was also very thankful for the fact that my "baby" was on her way to serve God in the Dominican...

I know that He will reveal Himself to her in some special way.. and I pray this for all of them!! I am sure He will, since they are obediently following His call:

Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.  Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,  and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

Matthew 28: 19+20