A Destiny Redirected

About two years ago, our youth ministry had what’s called “Life Coach” sessions – this came about during a message my pastor shared regarding 10//20 – 10//20 is the moment where crisis and destiny collide and you realize that life takes upon itself a whole new level than you’ve ever dreamed it could be lived out.

From the Life Coaching sessions emerged a connection that I would not forget. Lieutenant Kernel Tracey Saiki was one of the speakers. I had met her while doing her media for one of her sessions. She spoke on the practicalities of achieving one’s dreams and goals. She was one of my favorite life coaches at that time – 2 years ago in 2006.

Fast forward to 2008 and here we are – browsing through our local “Farmer’s Market” talking about life, our dreams, personality traits and “Fairy Tales”.  Here I am, spending quality time with one of my generation’s most treasured Life Coaches – sitting with her in her convertible talking about Native American fables and Cactus and Arizona.  We ate fried green tomatoes and crepes, drank genuine ginger ale made locally from the islands. It’s a whole new world that I longed to be a part of.

I had shared with her my taste in guys – and we are so similar in this respect. I also shared with her how I was near close to have moved back to Arizona after I graduated high school…then a whole new aspect of my life opened up from it’s slumber.

Have you ever found yourself going one way in life – and totally being redirected in another way? It’s very subtle for most of us, but when I was younger, I was headed for a different “path” if you will – a different dream, if I can explain it, “it” for me was a “whole different reality“For some reason till this day I’m not aware of, I captured a compassion for “Native Americans” – I’m not even native American myself and when I was living in Arizona, I hardly saw them, but I knew that eventually I would go back to Arizona and pursue this heart’s calling to minister to Native Americans. I knew my plans – I was to stay with my brother’s who lived in Phoenix (4 minutes away from ASU) and take up American Indian Studies.  They had a room for me, a car that I didn’t have to pay for and a welcoming gesture. My mom was going to front the bill for me to fly to Arizona. I was to attend “Phoenix First Assembly“. Everything was absolutely “Perfect” – but I ended up staying in Hawaii – because of a church – that had a vision that I fell absolutely in love with.

At that time, the vision was still new to our country, and there were very few churches that had the G12 vision implemented in their strategy for winning the lost and disciplining believers.  I couldn’t leave because of the vision. So I stayed, became employed at my local church, served in the ministry, bought my own car, still live with my parents, etc. Now, my dream has shifted very significantly and has formulated me into a writer of relationships.  The culture that I’m “studying” if you will happens to be the natives of Samoa, not America.  My pastor’s heart is to reach the 44 nations and my dreams and my direction is tied into the local church that I chose to be planted in some eight years ago.

Now that I think about it, my dreams and direction perhaps haven’t changed – but it’s different because of my local church. If I attended Phoenix First Assembly, I would’ve probably have still ended up being a writer – maybe even about relationships – but I would’ve gone about it in a different way, and I would still have studied an indigenous culture – but it’ would’ve been native Americans.  But since I’m here in Hawaii – under this pastor – I’m currently living this out side of my reality out.

To illustrate this further,  it’s like a fish who lives in the Atlantic ocean, feeds 3 times a day and swims with coral reefs. This is the fish’s reality and life.  Say for example, you come along and scoop the fish up and have a choice between relocating it in the pacific ocean or the Indian ocean. Say, you drop it off in the pacific ocean. It still eats 3 times a day, but in a different way because the waters in the Pacific are a little different than the Atlantic or even the Indian. It still swims the coral reefs, but it’s different coral reefs (of course). Same calling – different people – different variety of calling.

I couldn’t help but to think that my life could’ve taken upon two different realities.  It makes me think what would’ve happened if I did move to Arizona? Samoa would’ve been Native America, and relationships? I wonder if that would’ve remained the same. You just wonder what would’ve happened on the other side of the alternate universe?

Of course we all could only live one life, one story – even though life has so many possibilities. This is a new concept for me. I always thought that there was only one story to be written about your life – and you simply choose whether or not you live out that story.

But anyway, do you believe that things happen for a reason? My conversation with Tracey was so much more than divine, I really believed it served a purpose – and that conversation (as simple of a conversation as it seemed) could’ve very well redirected my heart regarding my purpose in life.

At one point in my life, I was very interested in the Native American culture – I fell in love with a culture that I knew for sure I was going to be a part of in a very significant way. In a way however, I forfeited that direction, that “calling” to pursue what is in my heart to be a greater “calling” – the vision of my local church. It’s funny, because God still hasn’t disregarded that calling from my earlier childhood – but he’s redirected it in a totally different way. Everday I come across my Samoan friends and I experience this culture that they “exude” and I have fallen in love again with a culture. But more than just a “culture” it’s the “people” that captivate me. It’s like reliving my “Native American” days again – but this time it’s with the Samoan people, a people that I really love and appreciate, a people who consider me an “outsider” with an “insider” understanding. I am familiar with this feeling, as I had felt it some odd years ago.

I really don’t know where my heart’s going with this. But I do know now that I have a greater sense of “Destiny” and pursuit. Pheonix First Assembly now has the G12 vision my pastors have. It would make sense for me to get up, move to Arizona and pursue the calling I experienced close to ten years ago; BUT the thing is, I could have not lived out a greater “senario” than I am in right now! I love the samoan people (90% of my Life Group ladies are “samoan” ) I absolutely love them! I can’t imagine myself being any where else, with any other people than the vision and the people God has placed in my life with the Pastors I have, with the pacific island people of Samoa – I couldn’t have imagined it any other way.

~ by lexigurl on November 2, 2008.