Early Influences and Interests

I can remember sitting in my second-grade desk listening to stories our teacher told of a missionary named Amy Carmichael. She lived in a place called India and provided a home for hundreds of children who needed it. Her story was special and memorable to me because God didn't give her certain things that she wanted, and for good reason. When she was a child she used to pray every day that God would change her eyes from brown to blue, and every day she would wake up disappointed that her eyes were still brown. In her work in India, brown eyes became one crucial aspect for her to blend in with and gain cultural acceptance of the people.
God does a lot of not giving me what I want, but I think sometimes when I realize this, I feel extra loved because then I better see how I have already been given all I need.
Throughout my life and especially in high school I have had a lot of experiences in this. When you don't get something that you are greatly desiring and kind of counting on, (and sometimes the littlest things can be a big deal in high school,) you can either respond in self-pity, or with an attitude of acceptance. It was during major times of self-pity that I was pulled out of it by seeing a larger perspective. What do these things matter if in the end I do not gain Christ? He became to me every reason for living. The desire to know Him superseded all other desires and produced in me a want to not be selfish anymore. It's just not worth it.
I also did a report on Amy Carmichael in a later grade, learning that she rescued children who had been sold into temple prostitution. The idea of forced prostitution enraged me, because it is such a violation of something that should be a personal choice. Reading about the amount of pain that these children had gone through before they came to Amy became like an echoing voice in my head.
Just because I began to recognize my inherent selfishness doesn't mean I all of the sudden became good at living an unselfish life. Most of my decisions still wreaked of motives to benefit solely me. But luckily I had groups of people to point me in the right direction. I went on a trip with my church youth group to New Orleans the summer after my junior year in high school. It was incredible because of how well our team of teenagers worked together, how much work we did, and how little anyone complained. Gutting houses as a part of Katrina relief in that humid, hot, sticky, smelly air was probably the hardest I have every physically labored in my life. But it was also the most rewarding. People would pull over on the road when they saw us and get out of their cars and personally thank us for helping rebuild their city. For the first time in a long time I felt as if what I was doing actually was worth something. And I knew God better by it.
We were given time in the mornings just to pray and spend time reading the Bible. The last morning we were there, I asked God to speak to me. I wanted to know what He wanted of me, and in that moment I was so willing to do whatever. After praying this, "God, have me!" kind of prayer, I opened up my Bible and ended up at Matthew 28, wanting to read something as joyous as I felt. I read about the best miracle of Jesus rising to life, and praised Him for it. But what next? His words to His closest followers spoke that day directly to me, (verse 19) "Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you."
I stopped, almost unable to breathe. Maybe you have experienced when the Word of God talks to you as if it were written for you in that moment. I can't describe very well what it felt like when I read this. In that moment I was overwhelmed by something very much greater than myself. It scared me a little. And then I finished the verse. 
"And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."
And that was enough.
This marked the first time I felt called to go. Where to? No idea. To follow completely was all I knew I must do.