What happens if after "Going Home" you "Leave Home..."

Recently I was brought back to this old blog and was shocked at how different my life is now compared to 7 or 10 or more years ago. Of course, now it's 2022 and everyone's life has changed due to COVID and all its ripple effects. Six years ago I went back to work. After COVID working from home, everyone is talking about, and doing studies on "Return to Work" or "Return to Office" (RTW/RTO). After being sure I was to "Go Home and Tell" many years ago - a beautiful season of life - it became clear in 2015 that I was to "Leave Home and Go Back", "Return to Work". Back to work, back to the non-family mission field, back to having to worry about hair, and clothes and things that I know don't matter for eternity but unfortunately do matter in the workplace. I was very frustrated - again "my" plans had been sidetracked - didn't the Lord call me home? Didn't HE call me to pour my life into my husband, family, community, church, ministering to those around me? Why in the world would HE call me to go back into "Egypt"? Or did HE............ maybe HE is calling me to be obedient to HIS timing, HIS calling, HIS place of service, once again taking me out of my comfort zone and putting me back into a place I did not choose. In the past six plus years, I am back face-to-face with my old demons, my old fears of not being "successful", my old frustrations of inequalities, injustices, incentive tempations to push my way through. Had I not grown any in the Lord and knowledge of who HE was, who I was, how to rely totally on HIM alone? Had I not learned to trust Him and His timing and ways at all during those years when I went home to tell? On top of that, some of those precious children are now grown and have chosen to walk away from the love of Christ. Talk about feeling like a failure. Feeling like years and tears have been wasted and now I have to return back to the old dog-eat-dog-I'll-never-be-good-enough work world and face all of my fears and frustrations. Oh, ouch - "I", "me", "my" keeps ringing in my ears (and evident in those sentences above!). Was I sure that I was being called back into the work world and being obedient or was it just our financial needs (wants) of the "I" "me" "my"s? I'm not sure. At some point, though, I have learned one thing - GOD is bigger than my choices - good, bad and ugly ones. And so I trust that even if the reason I "Left Home" to go back was the wrong reason, HE knew that before I did and if I seek to be a vessel for HIM, HE will use that decision anyway. How do I know this? Well, years in to this "new" journey I see now that HE has brought across my path at work many with broken marriages, estranged children, a father whose son was murdered in mistaken identity as a drug dealer, a 52 year old wife who lost 4 children to miscarriage and then lost her love-of-her-life husband unexpectedly to an anuerysm, a 9/11 NY twin towers survivor still dealing with the guilt of surviving, two single Moms at totally different stages of life, two different Muslim women from other countries, an MK who had lost his zeal for Christ, several managers who have had very negative experiences with "church" and therefore sadly do not understand the true love of Christ and the cross, and some beautiful sweet sisters in Christ who encourage me in my wobbly walk. Someone once said even a small, quick matchlight penetrates the deepest darkness to bring light and hope. And the LIGHT OF THE WORLD has promised to be with us, no matter where we are. That's one sweet promise.