Rocking horses + Skeleton keys
When I said lead me anywhere, I did not mean Algonquin, Illinois. Yet somehow that is exactly where I am. At a quaint little B&B in the middle of nowhere Illinois.
I came here for work and basically that's all I wanted to do. Get on an airplane, get in a rental car, get to my hotel, shut the world out and work. Yet when I put the address in my GPS, it drove me here to this cute little B&B in the middle of nowhere.
No.
That was not the plan.
And as I walked in I became more and more sure that I was in an episode of Punked.
Rocking horse ✔
Kitty cat ✔
Lots of guests that I have an assigned time to eat breakfast with ✔
Wanting to shut out the world = not happening...
So rather than having coffee and running out the door to work this morning, I sat down for 45 min with a table full of strangers and had fruit and quiche and coffee. Inside I was dying.
As we went around the table and shared where we're each from, I didn't want to. I wanted to have my coffee and go. But everything in me knew what a perfect opportunity this was to share my work with Work Vision and Photoserve with six strangers that in my wildest dreams, I would have never known otherwise. And as I shared briefly, they started asking questions. All the right questions. And before I knew it, we were all talking.
As we went around the table and shared where we're each from, I didn't want to. I wanted to have my coffee and go. But everything in me knew what a perfect opportunity this was to share my work with Work Vision and Photoserve with six strangers that in my wildest dreams, I would have never known otherwise. And as I shared briefly, they started asking questions. All the right questions. And before I knew it, we were all talking.
An hour and a half later, the woman sitting across from me is in tears telling me how the first photograph she saw at 5 years old changed her life. The man to my left is sharing about how he uses his free time as a doctor to practice medicine in the mountains of Peru. And each of them are coming to the little church that I flew here to work with, so that they can walk through World Vision's child friendly space and refugee experience. It was beautiful; really. And all this from a conversation I never wanted to have in the first place.
Whew, engaging is exhausting. But it is so, so good. The most valuable connections, relationships and partnerships take work, but sometimes I just want to shut the door and be done. However in the strangest ways and in the places that I would never choose to be, God sits me down and reminds me that He is here. And that if I'll make the effort to be present too, there is far more work that He wants to do.
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