Always striving toward a goal

I'm pretty sure I missed my professional calling in my earlier career days. I worked in Marketing and Management, the corporate life. Report to an office, work on projects, manage others, travel a bit, pretty much the same routine week after week. At the time I enjoyed my career. I do not regret those years, I just hope to never return to that environment.

Shortly before the birth of our second child I retired from the corporate life to become a stay-at-home mother. Big adjustment. Huge. I now had the routine of caring for a 2 year old and newborn. Can someone pipe in the song "A Whole New World...."

Throughout the past sixteen years of being home full-time I have dabbled in a few part-time work ventures as well as volunteer opportunities. What have I enjoyed the most? The times when I am devoting time in service to others, particularly those less fortunate than myself.

Time spent in Guatemala is most precious to me. It is not easy. It is not a vacation. While in Guatemala one is surrounded by intense beauty and intense poverty. There are times I silently remind myself that I am not on a movie set. This is reality. Real people with very real needs live in circumstances unimaginable to most people living in the United States.

When the airplane transporting me to Guatemala touches down I am at peace. At the end of a trip when the airplane ascends into the sky taking me away from Guatemala I always leave a bit of my soul behind. I am a changed woman as a result of the time I have spent in Marco, Gustavo, and Ana Lucia's birth country.

My hope is that I will always be generous. I want to be generous with my love. I strive to be generous with my time and resources. I continue learning that to be generous with all I have been blessed with is an important avenue in spreading the love of God.

The following scriptures really speak to me. My prayer is that I will truly live them on a daily basis.

"Defend the cause of the weak and fatherless; maintain the rights of the poor and oppressed. Rescue the weak and needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked."

~Psalm 82:3 - 4

I John 3:17 - 18 tells us:

"If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth."

The same scripture from The Voice version of the Bible reads:

"If a person owns the kinds of things we need to make it in the world but refuses to share with those in need, is it even possible that God's love lives in him? Once God's love takes hold of a person, it is impossible for him to close his heart to his brothers and sisters in God's family. My little children, don't just talk about love as an idea or theory. Make it your true way of life, and live in the pattern of gracious love. "

Live in the pattern of gracious love - my heart's desire. Will you join me?