Just a quick note: Pictures from India will be very limited. Basically, you can’t take pictures while serving and no one else really took any while walking because the girls are looking down and the guys are looking out for the girls. (We have awesome guys on our ATW team)
“It is in forgetting oneself that one finds.”
Recently, I’ve had a lot of struggles with my calling. In a Lutheran college, I am surrounded by friends who feel called to be pastors, teachers, or DCEs. They have this feeling of being led to do something. Even friends who aren’t going into ministry have an idea of what they want to do and have things that they are passionate about.
I, however, don’t know my calling. I don’t feel particularly led to do anything specific, and I’m really not sure what my passions are, especially if I think about it too much. The Around-the-World semester is in some ways a pause button on my life that I hope leads to finding my purpose.
By some past Rounders’ experiences, India is the place of brokenness—this is a brokenness not just of the people we work with, but of self. I’m in India to serve. The day’s task is to forget about one’s own problems, needs, wants, discomforts and just focus on loving the people that I find are right there.
I’m working at Prem Dan for the week which is the home for the elderly. Working here could include any number of tasks like making beds, washing laundry and dishes, serving food and feeding people, and taking them to the bathroom. The focus should be on the task at hand or on the person that I am sitting with and helping.
The problem is that it isn’t. Throughout the first day, I found that a lot of my thoughts were still focused around myself. I thought about how crazy it was that I found myself standing outside the open stall to a bathroom waiting for an elderly woman so I could help walk her back to her chair. I wondered if I was being helpful enough or how I looked in the eyes of other volunteers, the sisters, and the mashis. I prayed for myself as much as the women around me, as I kept asking for boldness to serve. Point is, I think about myself a lot.
If you were to go back and count the number of times the word ‘I’ was used in the 4 paragraphs above, you would get 20. That one letter on its own is used 20 times in about 300 words. Not the worst ratio when I’m writing about my calling and my experiences, but still, why is it like that? Why am I always so focused on me?
I’ve been attending a 6 am mass at the Mother Teresa Home before we meet at 7 to go off to our service houses. After the service, we end in a bunch of prayers. One is the prayer of Saint Francis which says, “It is in forgetting oneself that one finds.” This phrase stuck out to me the first morning serving, and I wrote it on my foot to remember the rest of the day.
Feet are notoriously dirty in India, and my chaco straps covered half of the phrase, but most of it was still there when I got back to the hostel in the afternoon and took my shoes off. I read it again and retraced the letters, “It is in forgetting oneself that one finds.”
My morning Bible chapter was John 13 which records when Jesus washed the disciples feet. With how dirty all of our feet were and still are, and since I painted some of the ladies’ toes at the home, it seemed like a fitting passage to reflect back upon. Jesus came to the world to make himself a servant. He washed the disciples feet which were just as dirty as mine if not even more so. Jesus didn’t care though because he came to love.
Later in the chapter verses 34-35 say “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples.” We are here to love. That is my calling right now—to love. I want to love and through that have the world know that I am a disciple of Christ, not the other way around where I want the world to know I’m a Christian so then I love.
Unselfish service is a way that love manifests itself here in Kolkata and at the Mother Homes. Love is forgetting oneself and wholeheartedly serving.
My goal for this country is to stop thinking about myself so much and just wholeheartedly serve. I went into this trip hoping that somehow, God would reveal His plan for my life while abroad. There are still over 2 months left where God could give me an answer, but so far I’ve just become even more confused about what God is calling me to in life or what I want to do in the future.
I don’t know if I will ever receive an answer or feel called to any specific job, but I do know that I am called to love and serve here in the present. And I guess only God knows, but maybe I’ll find an answer when I least expect it. After all “it is in forgetting oneself that one finds.”
I’ll have one final post on India along with Reese’s passage very soon…
Payton, you don’t know me, but I’ve been reading your posts and sharing thoughts with your Grampa Harvey. The fact that you are so concerned that you are being self-centered makes me think that you really aren’t (does that make sense?) Anyway, God might be planning to use you mightily very soon, or maybe not for a long time. You are a terrific writer, and your posts are easy to read. Blessings, Judy Delve
Hi Payton, I’m a bit behind on my reading of your journals! After I read this one I thought of a conversation that Bob Goff allows us to eavesdrop in on, “I [Bob] was with my daughter, Lindsey, at the airport recently. We were talking about whether or not God had a plan for our lives like lots of people talk about. So I sent a text message to one of Lindsey’s friends. ‘Hi, I’m sitting here with Lindsey’ the text started. (I didn’t want to creep her out.) ‘I want to know what your plan for my life is.’ A few minutes later, I got a text back from her friend. It just said ‘????’. I could picture her friend thinking, ‘My plan for Bob’s life??? Why would I have one???’ Lindsey and I kept talking for a few minutes and I got another text message from her friend. It said, ‘Bob, my plan for your life is that you would love God.’ Then a few minutes later, I got another one: ‘Bob, my plan for your life is that the things you are doing in Uganda would go just great’; and a few minutes later, still another: ‘My plan for your life is that you would love your family.’ Each of the text messages simply took something this friend knew about me, things she knew about God, things she knew I loved and were good for me, and she simply rolled them into a plan, or stated differently, a hope and a director for me. It was as though she was saying, ‘Bob, you know those things that have pinged you? Those gifts that are beautiful? Those countries and people who are most important to you? The God you love? KEEP MOVING TOWARD THOSE.’ And what she was pointing me toward wasn’t mystical or elusive. She just kept pointing me back toward the God I’m trying to follow, the people and the places I’ve been drawn to, and the hopes that have emerged within me. That’s what Jesus does too; He points us toward Himself.” Bob Goff