God's Calls Often Look LIke Calls From One Another

​A few weeks ago, I received an email from a young woman I’d never met. She found my contact info online and reached out to learn more about my work - specifically, the work I do connecting childhood trauma and adversity to long-term health.

I responded to her email. Turns out she was living in Dubai, but really wanted to chat. Our first phone call a few weeks ago led to five hours of early morning (time differences are real I'm here to tell you) virtual conversations this week.

She shared her story: how her family immigrated from Iran to the United States when she was five years old, chasing the only hope they had - treatment for her seven-year-old sister who was suffering from a rare disease. They didn’t know a soul here, but they were searching for survival, not community.

She spoke about what it was like to grow up in a foreign land, listening to a language she couldn’t understand, watching her parents navigate a strange world while caring for her sister. She told me how everything changed - again - when her sister passed away at 18.

Since then, she’s spent much of her life feeling out of place, always searching for something - somewhere - that felt like home.

That search led her, unexpectedly, to me.

But what she told me next is what moved me most: for the first time in her life, she feels like she’s found her place. And it’s not a location. It’s a purpose. She believes she was made to help bring awareness to the world about the importance of early childhood experiences, the very same work that has allowed me to find a home in life.

What a beautiful reminder that home is found in unity, and unity in unlikely places.

There were many moments in our conversations this week when I knew I wasn't talking to my friend in Dubai, but to the God of my universe. The God who has taken the challenging stories of my life and weaved them into opportunities to enter into the challenging stories of other people's lives.

There are things in our lives we can't even begin to imagine. There are visions for our life we do not have the capacity to envision - directions for our lives that get too destroyed in the wayward explosions of our lives.

Until God calls.

And when God calls, it rarely looks like what we expect.

Just weeks ago, I couldn’t have imagined being so deeply moved by the childhood story of a little Iranian girl. I couldn’t have imagined traveling to Dubai to meet her, to do everything I can to help her bring love and healing to the world.

But then again, maybe that’s the whole point.

Quite often, our imaginations are limited by our unwillingness to pick up the phone when God calls, usually because we can’t imagine that God’s call might come disguised as an email from halfway around the world.

But more each day, I am learning to live in awe of the stories God is trying to write into my life.

And more each day, I am learning to let God write.