Shileen's Blog

There were some great conversations that took place in Chicago. Over one particular lunch we debated the action of waiting for God's open doors while being content where you are and not finding your identity in where your area of ministry is VS making a 5 year plan for where you want to be and working backwards from there making small steps to get where you believe you're supposed to be. There are the classic arguments like.. God's not interested in your plans.. or Don't open doors that God wants closed.. VS God can only steer a moving ship. All valid points, and I've been on both sides of this philosophy at some point. The reason it came up is because I was talking with Matt about how I don't ever want to do photography anymore and I've even "taken time off" from the media team. I'm not really pursuing any goals or ministries right now because last time I did I ended up in the pit of hell. As for photos, I actually HATE doing paid photo gigs at the moment because I'm not one of these "trendy" photographers that want to edit the photos the way everyone else is doing them this year. Then we got onto the whole thing about compromising your passion when it's a job thing, and whether you shouldn't do that for your job, etc.. (he's on the 5 year plan side of the argument) Their argument really didn't convince me to make any plans. I guess I'm just too trigger shy now. I just really don't want to do something that God hasn't ordained for me. But I also don't want to fall into the trap of not doing something out of fear of failing, and end up doing nothing with the rest of my life when I should have been doing something. So then we get back to the conference and the guy who invented Veggie Tales is speaking about how he let go of everything and now waits on God to open doors. I thought that was pretty funny and timely. Matt says it's not an either/or thing. I'm just confused.

God has seemingly opened the door a very small crack into helping out in a very small way in missions. So I said yes. That may be the end of it, or the beginning of it. I don't know. But I will remain steadfast in my statement that I will be content if I never get to serve in that way again. It is enough to just be a child of God, a wife and mom, in my home, serving wherever He opens a door.