Don't ask, if you don't want an answer

For thirty years, every morning I got up and went to school - well, not on most weekends, but I knew where I was supposed to be.  Then I retired!~ Everybody keeps asking me how I'm doing and whether I like retirement.  I am not sure how to answer them. But I have been asking God what He wants my retirement to look like and I think, just maybe, He is beginning to show me....don't you love God moments?  Holy coincidences?

Anyway this last weekend, two forms of media shook my world.  First, my husband shared a video of a young girl, shot in the face by the Taliban in Pakistan, speaking at the United Nations in response to what happened to her.  Let me suggest you go to this site to read the text of her speech:

https://secure.aworldatschool.org/page/content/the-text-of-malala-yousafzais-speech-at-the-united-nations/ or watch it at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5X70VyjU0g

I would like to quote it all here but let me give you a bit:

So here I stand...    one girl among many.  I speak – not for myself, but for all girls and boys.  I raise up my voice – not so that I can shout, but so that those without a voice can be heard.  Those who have fought for their rights:  Their right to live in peace.  Their right to be treated with dignity.  Their right to equality of opportunity.  Their right to be educated.  

Dear sisters and brothers, we realise the importance of light when we see darkness. We realise the importance of our voice when we are silenced. In the same way, when we were in Swat, the north of Pakistan, we realised the importance of pens and books when we saw the guns.
The wise saying, “The pen is mightier than sword” was true. The extremists are afraid of books and pens. The power of education frightens them. They are afraid of women. The power of the voice of women frightens them. And that is why they killed 14 innocent medical students in the recent attack in Quetta. And that is why they killed many female teachers and polio workers in Khyber Pukhtoon Khwa and FATA. That is why they are blasting schools every day.  Because they were and they are afraid of change, afraid of the equality that we will bring into our society.

Then we watched a movie from 2007 - Freedom Writers - a true story about a first year teacher at Long Beach, California where her inner city students, as 14 year-old freshmen, have all been shot at and have lost one or more of their friends to gang violence.  They do not really believe they will live to graduate.  Now there's a challenge for an English teacher!!  But she is creative and she believes they could and should learn, even when she must take on second and third jobs to fund the books and trips they need to give them hope and a way out.

These two young women believed in a cause and pursued it, at the possible cost of their own lives.  Their courage and bravery and willingness to personally sacrifice reminds me of the young missionaries who "gave up" all they could have had in this country to carry the gospel to those who had no hope.  It made me think of our young BBC grads who are willing to think outside of the box to follow God into uncharted territory because they believed God for their future.

And it challenged me to consider what God might have for me now, if I would just believe and follow His leading.  So what does retirement mean to me...it means adventure.  It means courage.  It means believing and anticipating and watching for what and where God might lead...Right now, I am a writer, so for the moment, it means writing.  We will see what else it means.