It took me two years to become certified to teach English as a second language. I tutored while at Emmaus but my biggest opportunity came the summer after my junior year. I traveled to Littleton, CO, where I spent the summer volunteer teaching an ESL class at a church there. I lived with a family from the church and worked at a landscaping company on the side.
I’m a Kansas girl for sure but living in the mountains for a summer was pure heaven. I’m not as adventurous as I’d like to be, but Colorado brought out the adventurous spirit I do have. I even attempted hiking a fourteener with a friend. Didn’t make it all the way up but what I did was worth it.
At first, with everything unfamiliar, I struggled with contentment. Then my friend Naomi challenged me. “You never feel at home wherever you go. Why can’t you be settled?” I asked God that and his response was, “You need to see that I am your home. You never need to feel alone.” Realizing that changed my life. God brought me to Colorado and away from everyone and everything I’d ever known, my relationship with him went deeper than it ever had before.
I could fill a month’s blog with stories about that summer alone. Hiking every weekend. Discovering a Christian coffee shop where I spent hours journaling. Teaching myself to grill and eating on a deck looking out at the mountains. Tutoring a wealthy Venezuelan woman and a lonely Korean woman. Teaching an intermediate English class with students from 4 different continents. Waterskiing for the first time. Being told by a Mexican-American guy I shoveled mulch with for 8 hours in the Denver sun that I worked harder than most Mexicans he knew.
Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. (James 4:8)
Someone once said that God doesn’t have favorites, but he does have intimates. And it’s up to us how intimate we want to be with God. That summer was my “last hurrah” if you will as a single woman and I spent it drawing near to God. As much as I love being a wife and mom, it will be a long time before I have the time like that to spend alone with God. And I miss it. As a mom living my faith in the trenches of everyday life I look back thankfully at the time I spent as a single woman getting to know God’s heart before the busyness of motherhood took over my days.