Does Anyone Remember?

I graduated from high school in 1964. That's just to give you a frame of reference. :)

When I was in the eighth grade everyone had to take a "Career Inventory." I remember the counselor was a young woman (she must have been really young if, as a teenager, I remember her as young!) who had to give us all the test and then tell us one at a time what it said we should do with our lives. Mine said I would like to be a preacher.

I laughed and laughed. Women weren't preachers! Not in that time or in that place. And besides, my parents didn't even go to church. My sister and I went but that wasn't like families that all went to church together. At least in my mind. I said, "no thanks, I'm going to be a newspaper reporter." Not sure why I picked that but there you have it.

This weekend my pastor's wife and another friend and I were talking in the ladies room after church - all kinds of things are discussed in there you know - and she told our friend that I was "going to the mission field." I'm sure my head whipped around and my mouth fell open. The mission field? I'm going to the mission field? No, no, no. I'm just going on a mission trip. Granted I'll be gone for four months but the mission field, no way, not me. Then it dawned on me. I'm..going..to..the..mission..field. That's a scary thing! I don't go till June so I have a good long time to build up my "what if's." Thank goodness I'm not going out of the country or that "what if's" list might be a mile long! What if our house sitter(s) can't do it? What if my mail gets all mixed up and I don't get some bills? What if I don't take enough sewing with me? What if I don't have time to sew? What if I have to get my hair cut and it's 8 hours back here to my hairdresser? What if I hate the bed, the temperature, the town, the work, the.... Oh my, I'm working myself into a dither.

I'm not sure where all that came from! I'm just writing because I think it's really ironic that in the eighth grade my counselor said I should be a preacher and at 63 I'm going to the mission field. Do you think God might have been pointing a certain direction out to me then and I ignored Him? I'm guilty of ignoring Him way too often but in this case I don't think so. I can't see me being a preacher - oh I like to talk that's true. But when it comes to making a point, not so much. However, that whole newspaper reporter thing, isn't that what I'm doing on this blog? So there.