I wonder if life is meant to be lived as a series of assignments.
As emails rolled in from school, I was beginning to think that my assignment may be to teach our kids at home this year. As I talked with God about that (in my head while out for a run), I felt God saying my assignment was something completely different. It wasn’t big and flashy, but it was a reprioritization, realigning my gaze to His.
I wonder if, at times, we name our assignment the thing closest at hand. The obvious things. My assignment is to work. My assignment is to stay home. My assignment is to be a wife. My assignment is to have kids.
Is it? Is that all of it?
If we are willing to embrace the tension and ask God what our assignment is, I wonder if my friend’s assignment will be to tell people they can rely on their insulin pump, but ultimately they can rely even more on their God. She can promote the pumps all day long, with ease and her strength…but with God, her overflow could change their everything.
My sister homeschools her kids. That is part of her assignment, but what I see spilling from the overflow of her heart is empathy and strength in the hard things. When my daughter’s heart was failing, her strength paired with empathy was God’s assignment for her that day, and I have seen Him use her to stand in that gap time and time again.
I’m not saying that our assignments aren’t to be wives, work hard, and raise great kids. I just wonder if part of our assignments are the things crafted in us, placed in our hearts, spaces we arrived at because our hearts were broken through trying circumstances, and are maybe the things powered only by Him.
My sister was the kid who cried on my leg on the playground because she was barely strong enough to make it until our mom picked us up from school. When her daughter was given a lethal diagnosis, God raised up a champion in my niece and in my sister. It changed her assignment. When my friend’s son was diagnosed with diabetes this winter, likely her worst fear because of her diagnosis as a child, God birthed a fighter in her son, and a warrior in my friend.
That doesn’t mean your assignment isn’t what’s right in front of you, I just wonder if sometimes our assignment may be yes and _______.
It may be the thing we can’t do on our own and can only do because we walk with a limp and live reliant on Him. For me right now, that’s writing. I can’t write. Yet when God births something that may be for your soul, as I type it out, that may be my assignment for that few minutes.
It may be worth asking God about. It doesn’t mean that teaching the kids won’t be a major priority this year, but I did feel like God gave me another assignment. That doesn’t mean we don’t do the daily things with purpose and passion, but His assignment for you may be different than you expect.
When we read about the heroes of the Bible, we remember God’s assignment for them, and many of them were also wives, mothers, and had jobs.
Let’s ask God about it. He may surprise us.
HLLF,
