Involuntary MISSION

When I had a seizure while teaching in China, what was I to do when the university's vice president wouldn't shake hands with me because he thought epilepsy was a contagious disease? Or when a university Communist officer said I was fired to prevent a "political disaster", what was I to do? Why stay in China when a director at a different university of law told me that my "parents must be very evil" to let me travel alone with epilepsy? Or what would I do when my mother begged me to come home because of the SARS pandemic in Wuhan?

I stayed because after a life of feeling that I'd been cursed by God for some reason. People were seeing that I wasn't what they expected of "materialistic, obnoxious war-like" Americans. They trusted me while they were Looking for a different way of life than Communism, and God wanted me to help these people. They learned to trust me, and that I'd be patient and let them have time to digest the words God used me to speak for Him so that they would make the decision to accept him for themselves. Just as it was for me.

I BECAME PROUD TO BE EPILEPTIC! That was part of God's plan all along as a key to their hearts.

The seizures never hindered me from anything I wanted to do. My parents raised me to believe in serving others, and that to meant to me that I'd do something that would be big enough to make me historically popular. Before I was 18, the greatest service I could give was being willing to die in the military. However, my epileptic history meant the Armed Forces would have nothing to do with me. My life's purpose was lost!

Car wrecks, unemployment, moving to my parents' to recover my witts I never would have survived if my friend Lauren hadn't called me every night and repeat that there was a reason no one was ever hurt in those car wrecks: "It's not your time to die. God has a MISSION for you."

God hears our prayers; Just be patient, and He answers them in His own time and in ways greater than we'd imagined.