How did you end up here?

Chasing our Dreams along the Scenic Route

It's early Summer in Sichuan, and the crew and I are mentally steeling ourselves for the coming heat. Our home port city of Chongqing has the foreboding honor of being titled one of China's 'Three Furnaces"- sweltering stoically alongside Nanjing and Wuhan. The question looming over us each day is not "Will the temperature creep higher than 95?", but "How much higher?"

Some unlucky foreign travelers have unwittingly chosen this sticky, uncomfortable time of year for their tour of our region. They have been struggling to find their nirvana all day, and I don't blame them. But now in the mild relief of evening, in between shallow breaths of humid air, and sips of local beer, they find the cordiality to ask me a curious question.

"How in the World did an American girl end up working on a boat in China?"

I am often asked this question, and I answer it according to my mood- usually with some cheeky one-liner.

The outright lie: "I was just so tired of doing my own cooking!"

The half-truth: I couldn't find a job in the US!"

Or the crowd-pleasing quip: "Oh, I bribed a High Official." Obviously....

More rarely, if I think I can get away with it- The ethereal teaser: "The Lord spoke to me in a dream, and now here I am."

Which is actually the closest of them all to the real story- the ‘Cocktail-Party-Version’ of which, goes something like this:

"The year was 2016. I had been working in hotel accounting, in Northern New Jersey. It was a good life- I highly recommend to anyone.

But I felt complacent. I wasn't using my better talents... I needed to be among the people! And also, [*Here, with a shrug*-] I felt like God was calling me to the Sea. 

So I packed up all my things. I gave up my apartment. I gave notice at my job. And I sent out applications to all the ships, on all the seas.

And no one called me.

So I went to Boston.

I rented a room with borrowed money. I lied on the lease about having a job. Then I got that job! But just as my hiring documents were being submitted, the company announced a "Hiring Freeze". No budget to pay me for another 4 months.  

 I took 2 other jobs. By days I worked on-call as a cocktail server, a prep cook, and the ever-glamorous dishwasher. Overnights, I kept watch over the quiet, fire-lit lobby of a small hotel.

Then I tried my hand at managing a bakery. After that, back again to hotels. Then I had to move across town to a new apartment. And eventually, I was spinning crepes at a kiosk in the train station. 

And Then finally, when I worried that perhaps I could find no more hustle in me-- that perhaps my ship had sailed.... or maybe all my ships, and all my dreams had sailed!-- This tiny ship called me.

I answered the phone, and a quiet man spoke with me for a few minutes, and then he said the words I had been waiting years to hear. 'I think you'll do.'

Then after just four more months of paperwork, police checks, doctor's exams, and near financial ruin, they sent me a plane ticket. And Now Here I Am!!"

Easy Pie.

The Lord is not slow in keeping his promises.  2 Peter 3:9 

LOL, Ok, Lord, if you say so……

But for sure, He has a Way better Imagination than we do, don't you think?

I wouldn't have missed a moment of those 2 years "in-between". The people I've known have made me better in a thousand ways. Like iron sharpening iron, the women I've lived with, and the hustlers I've hustled with have made me more gracious, more patient, and so much more tenacious in my pursuit of being truly steadfast . It's putting it mildly to say, I would not have thrived in this slow-boat life I’m living now without their correcting influence.

From my zoomed-in, human point of view, it makes sense to tell this story beginning from 2016, but I could probably tell it from so much longer ago. Or, God can. He has always known the end from the beginning. 

And that's what's so cool about God as Author of our lives. He has such wild and good plans. 

What's fun for me is, maybe this cocktail-party-story isn't even over. After all, I'm not on the "Sea" yet…. Who can say what may be up ahead? But I have learned not to worry about it!

O LORD, my heart is not lifted up, my eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me. Psalm 131:1 

I'm just living out this scene, today, serving humbly on this stage, today. And with all my might. 

And where God sets my feet to land next, I'll try and do the same. Hopefully on even sturdier legs, and with even fuller faith.

The One who Calls us is Faithful. 1 Thessalonians 5:24

Count on it.

So let’s keep running, (clumsily as we may!) after our big dreams. But let’s take All our time, and enjoy All the scenery as we go. 

But- For the love!- Don't come and try to enjoy the scenery in Sichuan in Summer! There will be no amount of cold Tsingtao beers that can help you if you do.

Then again, I'll be here to help keep you laughing through it all.