I think my mind, body and soul are letting down after almost 10 years of ministry.

It occurred to me this morning that right now I am in the first extended period of not being in some kind of outreach-based ministry since my freshman year in college.

I led Bible studies or evangelistic outreaches or short-term missions trips for 3 out of my 4 years in college.  I discipled people, I shared the Gospel, and somewhere tried to fit in classes and homework and tests.  Then I spent a year interning with InterVarsity, immediately after which I left for Bangkok for 5 years.  Where I not only helped plant a church and train leaders and disciple new believers, but did it all while sharing my space with rats and mosquitos and the sounds of all sorts of chaos of my slum.

And I wonder why I’m tired?

I wouldn’t trade a minute of my last 10 years.  And I hope that sometime soon God will lead me back into direct ministry, will again give me people to whom I can be his hands and to whom my voice can speak his words of love.  If it were strictly up to me, I’d have that now.  I’d choose to be full of energy; having had a couple months of rest I’d come down to L.A. and hit the ground running again, rather than feel the way I do now, like I’m moving through molasses.

So since I don’t have a choice in the matter, I’m resting a minute.  I’m taking a deep breath.  And after so many years of finding my significance in the people who became believers, or numbers in my Bible study, I’m now remembering that I was significant to God before I could take my first step.  And I’m significant now, though I feel once again like a child who needs to be carried and cared for.

I’m still playing a key role in Servant Partners, though it is much more behind-the-scenes, much less emotionally exhausting.  I have time to sleep and to read and to process things I had no energy to deal with while in Bangkok.  I can see God’s hand, now, in preparing a room for me out in a nearby middle-class suburb, though I’d hoped to live among the poor in the ghetto.  It hadn’t made sense at the time, but now I see God knew what he was doing (imagine that).

Jesus says the call is to lay down your life, to lose it in order to find it in him.  I think this is what I’m learning– that sometimes this life-surrender looks like sharing in the suffering of the least of these, of following Jesus to the margins and the marginalized.  But sometimes it looks like laying down ungodly ambition, as righteous as it may appear, to allow God to bring his Kingdom more fully into one’s own weary heart and soul.

It’s Mary kneeling at Jesus’ feet when so much could be done in the kitchen.  It’s the expensive perfume poured out on his feet, which could have been sold and given to the poor.  It’s my feet, bare and dirty, being washed by Jesus’ holy hands.