Need vs. Desire

About three months ago I was sitting on the beach in Brazil being so blessed by my time with 40 other missionary women from South America and 12 wonderful women who came down from the states to conduct a missionary women's conference! The main idea that I walked away with (understanding that I was blessed by many new ideas and thoughts from speakers and other missionary women) was that as women (and especially missionary women living in another culture) we have needs. If we can meet our personal needs we will be more effective as wives, mothers, missionaries and research says... we'll stay on the mission field longer than if we had neglected them.

It was so liberating to hear someone say to me... Laura you have needs, it's okay to identify what that specifically looks like for you and your family. And it's okay to work within what God has blessed you with to meet those needs. It was so wonderful to hear someone say "it's okay to take care of yourself" since as women I think we can be so focused on everyone else in our lives' that we lose sight of what our own needs are and what we can do to take care of ourselves.

(shifting gears just a little bit...)

Just recently I've been reading a book that introduces the idea of desires. I started the chapter on desire and was fully prepared to hear the traditional feel good teaching of... ask God for the desires of your heart and if you ask in faith He'll give them to you. I have heard that so many times and I think it is a travesty of a misinterpretation of what God meant when He said in Mark... Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it and it will be yours... but that's a whole nother blog post :)

The thing that God has really been opening my eyes to lately is the difference between needs and desires. For example I have the need to get out of the house by myself at least once a week. With a toddler in the house meeting that need can be tricky at times... but even if it just means going to the grocery store, running to the post office, or getting my haircut by lonesome... that is a need I have. It doesn't crunch our budget and with a supportive daddy and the help of Sonia I am able to meet that need on a pretty regular basis. I am a better mother and wife when I am able to meet that need.

Difference... I have a desire to live closer (in physical proximity) to my family and close friends. What I'm learning is that is not necessarily a need. I had mistaken it as a need and was blaming our situation (mainly Bolivia and it's people) for the fact that my "need" wasn't being met. But this chapter on desires really opened my eyes, and my heart. You see it is okay to have the desire in my heart to live closer. It's okay to say to God... I really and truly desire to live closer to my family and friends. But what I have to know is that as a desire, it is within the discretion and all knowing wisdom of my heavenly Father to say no, or not right now.

I don't always know why we're here. Let me rephrase, the obvious reasons remain the same: we are here to plant a church and bring souls to the Lord. I am fully on board and at peace with that. But on a day in day out basis when I find myself frustrated with my situation or surroundings it's sometimes hard to understand why our particular family was chosen for this life, why the call on our lives' to go to the mission field was so strong. And before I would have been resentful in that time of not understanding God and his will... but just that simple differentiation between needs and wants has opened my heart up in a whole new way to our life here. I have no idea how much longer God will ask us to say here... but what I know is that I can stop complaining (which my husband will be so grateful for), be more at peace about where we are, and live more for this day and this place in our lives knowing that God has answered me by leaving us here.

Please don't hear me saying that we're packing up and heading home... or that I've asked God for his blessing to leave this place, or that I feel abandoned in being "left" here. God made it so so clear to Gary and I both that Cochabamba is where we should be. I've made that decision with my husband to be here and we're not going anywhere. But the difference is that I can now embrace that call and be at peace in a way that I don't think I have been since we got here.

Gary started this blog as a way to communicate with our friends and supporters back home. It's been such a blessing to share the daily ins and outs of our life here with you... but what I long to share as well is how God is using this amazing experience to mold me as a woman into what he longs for me to be. I pray that my candor here is something that only helps others to have a better insight into the growth of this particular child of God. Being on the mission field is such a unique experience, and one that I feel I will be blessed to carry with me through the rest of this life. God bless and thank you for listening to the ramblings of a woman growing in her faith.