until you reached this place

As days go by here in Liberia, I find myself realizing that I'm possibly a real grownup now. Don't tell any of the myriad kids I play with every chance I get, but I don't think I am one of them any longer.

I think the straw that broke my proverbial back (not that I'm a camel or anything; the metaphor just seemed to fit) was getting this poster in the mail. Go ahead and click on that bright red square and you will see the reason I've had to say goodbye to my childhood once and for all. It's not really anything spectacular, nothing but a piece of posterboard with kids' signatures scattered across it in black marker. But if you look up there at the top, you'll see a little card with a photo and an address on it. It just happens to be me. Ali Wilks. Missionary.

I've gone to the same church since I was about two years old. Ever since I can remember, Mr. Don has been leading Vacation Bible School in the summers. Every year there was a missionary of the week, someone he would tell us stories about and someone we would pray for. And every time we would sign a poster that Mr. Don promised to send to the missionary in question; I've probably signed close to twenty of those posters. This year, it was me. I was that missionary, and I sent stories back to be read to the kids each day and I totally forgot about the poster thing until it showed up in the mail a week or so ago. When I pulled it out of the envelope and unfolded it across the floor of my cabin, I was overwhelmed with what I can only describe as the absolute weight of my calling and the unmistakable realization that I've grown up.

I've spent my life hearing stories about missionaries. The last Wednesday of every month sees my whole church in the basement, eating potluck casseroles and listening to a different warrior of the faith from some far-flung corner of the world. I sat there, enthralled, promising my grown-up, future self that I was going to be a missionary. Going to live in Africa and take care of those laughing, dark-eyed children. Going to let God use me however He felt like it.

I knew he was telling me that I'd go. Somewhere, someday. I guess I just didn't completely believe that He was serious.

And so, of course, because that's what happens when you doubt God, here I am. I'm that girl, the one who grew up and became a Nurse In Africa, which needs to be capitalized because I always thought it was such a big deal. And now that I'm here, I realize that missionaries aren't anything special. Not really. And neither are grownups; they aren't the superheroes I'd always made them out to be, because if they were, there's no way I could be one. They're just people. People who laugh and worry and do things right and do things wrong and somehow get through each day more or less intact.

I thought growing up and becoming a missionary would feel different, somehow. I figured I'd get to some magical point where I felt qualified to make decisions that affect the entire course of my life. And where being in charge of someone else's life while they lie helpless in a hospital bed wasn't flat-out scary. Where I'd know what to say and when to say it and then I'd be grown up.

Instead here I am. Just as petrified as the day I heard that still, small voice tell me not to get too comfortable in the States. And just when I'm ready to pack it all in, to throw up my hands in surrender and retreat from this strange world of responsibility and adulthood, that same voice whispers to me again.

There you saw how the Lord your God carried you, as a father carries his daughter, all the way you went until you reached this place. (Deuteronomy 1:31)

These waters are not so uncharted as I've made them out to me. A wiser mind than mine is laying plans. Stronger hands than mine are guiding me.

And a deeper heart than mine is loving through me.