A New Normal

When I was home, I got this response a lot when I told people about the work that we're doing here in Ghana, "Oh my goodness! That's amazing! I could never do something like that! You must be an amazing person!". To tell you the truth, it kind of overwhelmed me. I kept thinking, yeah, the work we do is pretty cool, but when you're here and it's your day to day life, well, it just seems NORMAL.

I was talking with my friend Evan Kolding while I was home, and he gave me some good insight.

He said that before I left, getting the funding and starting a school in Africa seemed IMPOSSIBLE. But, now, I have done it (not me alone, but with God's help and the help of his community!!), so now, the impossible has been made possible. What wasn't normal to me before, has now been made normal.

To continue my journey on the path of living our this "new normal", I am going to have to be stretched and challenged to dream up the next "impossible" journey and reach for even another level of impossibility.

His words made so much sense to me. And as I think about all the people who were amazed about the journey that God has me on for this season of my life, I realize that their journey's can be made up of that new normal too!

When I began teaching in EPA, I was living in San Carlos, a place of wealth compared to where I was teaching. I struggled heavily with the juxtaposition between where I lived and where I worked. So, I made a decision (when a room opened up) to move to East Menlo Park, the city next to EPA to live in the community where I worked. Any changes I would make, I knew they would directly effect the community in which I lived. For many, the thought of living in what was thought to be an "unsafe" community was scary and unreasonable. But, for me (and the girl's that I lived with), it was simply a new normal.

And so, maybe you're not called to live in a low-income community or move across the world, but you are called to something. I'm realizing that what we think is impossible, God sees as possible. And once we accomplish the impossible, our normal changes. By living a missional life (aware of the impossibilities that God places in front of us WHEREVER we are), we can all be challenged to live a "new normal".