Dreaming of the Big Picture

I feel like I've been created to do great things. Like God has a plan for me that will blow me away. Its not a conceited feeling. I don't think I'm any better than the next person. I just can't believe that God could have brought me through things without having a greater plan in mind. Like God hasn't given me certain gifts without having the plan to use them. I like to talk. A lot. I'm a chatterbox once you get me started. I even have inner dialogs with myself going on all the time. Why? Cause I can't seem to get myself to shut up even when there is no one around to talk to.  I'm in a position now, of both authority and up-frontness, where my gift of gab is extremely necessary. I feel like my love of speaking and desire to bring the Lord to teenagers go hand in hand. I've always wanted to do something in the 'Public Eye' so to speak. To be up front, to be able to be in front of huge crowds. Although when I was 16 and first learning guitar, I was determined to be in a Band, basically the next BarlowGirl. My sister and cousin and I even had a name, "Your Biggest Fan" complete with a theme song we wrote in my room, where one of the lines was "We will rock your socks cause we're your biggest fans". Song writing was not our strong point. I wanted to be the drummer of the band, cause I always figured the drummers were the coolest people. I broke a good pair of chopsticks knocking away on buckets in my room to my own version of what I thought was 'rhythm' (I blush to say that is not made up at all. Really happened)
I was certain I was meant to be a musician. I was going to be famous. In a way that happened, though I wasn't famous, I did get some new Myspace (remember that place?) followers from people I met when I was in a worship band that played at youth conferences and things.and I've been a member of our church's worship team for 5 years and I lead worship for youth group. However, as I matured, the rock star ideal faded and I decided I liked my ability to talk, and my lack of shyness made that easy. I think I was around 18 or 19 when I began to feel a passion for speaking. I didn't do it much. I became a youth leader 2 months before my 19th birthday, and was the small group leader for half the youth group. I soon discovered that teaching from a curriculum was not my thing. My first lesson as the small group youth leader, I completely rewrote. Same basis, my words. I can't teach from a lesson plan to save my life. I have no passion for it if it wasn't inspired by God to me personally. I'm not saying that these plans and curriculum's weren't good, they were great, and I would have really enjoyed it had I been the one being taught them. But I just couldn't teach someone else's words. The dynamics of youth group eventually changed, and the new youth director let me teach a few times. I remember my first time teaching. I was so excited and nervous. I labored for a long time over my message. You can imagine when it only took 15 minutes to get through everything when I had an hour to fill. Despite that, I was allowed to teach again, and several years later I was asked to step in as youth director. I was apprehensive, uncertain, and, I admit, a little scared. But I was excited. I could finally start speaking on a regular basis. And I'm having so much fun doing it. Every time I get to lead someone to Christ, I am so excited. God is using me. me! And I feel that this is only the beginning. I still want to be speaking to large groups. I still would love to travel and be a main speaker at conferences. I still feel like that's what I'm called to do. I feel like God is training me right now for the bigger picture. I'm learning so much from my current position. I love working with teenagers. I love little kids too, However, I used to teach Sunday School, and lets just say  that that wasn't my strong point. A desperation for Sunday school teachers at the time was what got me to teaching it, and I'm not sure anyone really benefited from my teaching the 3-5 year olds. (well, except the time I decided I would NOT teach them about Steven being stoned to death like it said in the lesson plan. I was not going to be the cause of their nightmares)

Thats another thing. I love teenagers. I've always wanted to help teenagers, to chat with them, to teach them, to inspire them. So you put two and two together and what do you get? a girl longing to be able to reach the masses in almost any setting, as long as she gets to talk.Talk about Jesus and what he's done for her. Its a pretty good dream. I think I'll live it.