A Foreign Address Does Not A Missionary Make

Some blog entries are hard to write. I have been sitting on this one for a week, trying to get up the courage and heart to write it, knowing I had to, but not knowing how I could do it.
Long before Ryan and I were called to Mexico, we had a different calling to work with Young Life Ministries to High School students. Even at that time, though still very comfortably in familiar settings, I considered myself a missionary. After all, is there anything so "foreign" as a high school lunch room. During the time that we served with Young Life we were privileged to help begin a program at Ninety Six High School here in South Carolina. We worked closely with an amazing and very unique bunch of kids. Strangely, as all American in appearance as Ryan and I are, we were drawn to and attracted the outer fringe kids. Kids who wore all black, pierced body parts and got tattoos, dyed their hair different colors. In other words, the outcasts, the misfits, the ones who wore their pain on their sleeves. We dealt with the drugged out, sexually permissive, the sad, the depressed and the angry. And we loved them!!!!
One of these precious souls became a particularly good friend of mine. Amanda and I share a similar, hurtful past. I was drawn to her immediately. God said almost audibly to me, "Seek her out, go to her!" I walked with her as she came in and out of hospitals for depression, anorexia, and attempted suicides. I touched her arms where she had cut herself mercilessly trying to make the pain inside go away. I took her to doctor's appointments and counseling sessions. More often than not it was hard, painful, and draining. But God continued to say go. Last week, the pain became more than she could stand any longer, and Amanda killed herself.
After six years of being out of Young Life, not seeing some of these kids since that time, and the others sporadically at best, they were thrust back into our lives. I didn't know if I wanted it. It scared me, and I hurt so bad over this loss. Guilt was crashing on top of me, anger, fear, sadness so intense I felt I could vomit. But once again I could hear God almost audibly say to me, "Go!"
I thought I was waiting to become a missionary, to move to Mexico so I could start ministry. I had forgotten. The hurting, broken and lost are all around us. Last week I became a missionary again. May I never forget...

Karen