Would you be willing...?

Would you be willing...to just let go?

One of the regular readers of this blog and I were talking about just surrendering to the guidance we received.  The words "Would you be willing..." echoed in my head as we talked.  They have haunted me as a non-musical earworm all evening.  Mother Teresa's name came up.  Would I be willing to go and work in squalor in Calcutta with people in such dire conditions?  We also mentioned working with refugees in Lebanon and caring for the injured in Syria.  How about caring for those suffering from ebola in West Africa?

There was a time when I am certain that I would have dropped everything to go wherever I was called.  After losing my business and having struggled to get back on my feet financially, I feel like I must have a "regular day job" at this time in my life.  The particular regular day job I have has me so booked up that in order to have 10 days vacation I had to schedule it six months in advance.  I am not sure how I would drop everything and go.

Yet, I know that is what I should do. I'd like to say that it was easier for people who dropped everything to do God's work in biblical times, but the truth probably is that it wasn't.  They didn't have to worry about mortgages and funding retirement to support themselves if they lived to be 100, but I suspect their existences were far more on the edge.  Walking away to serve has probably never really been easy.  I am certain they didn't have paid vacations to worry about scheduling.

For decades I've thought that when I retire that I would serve, but now it looks like I may never retire.  In the years when I was writing and speaking, I truly felt like I was showing up to serve just as God would have me do.  My friend reminds me that how I do what I do now is serving.  It rarely feels that way.

This blog is about living with the intention to do what you know is right in your heart...or more accurately, it is about me living with the intention to do what I know is right in my heart. I hope others will be inspired to share the journey. I wish I could say that I am doing that.  However, in something like the keyboard equivalent of a Freudian slip, when I wrote two lines above "to do what I know," what came out my fingers was "what I know is write in my heart."  Maybe that is the answer.  Will I be willing to make writing my intention because I certainly know in my heart that is right for me?