My Dad's Impromptu Challenge

Not to us, Lord, not to us, but to your name give glory. —Psalm 115:1

When I was nineteen, my family was on a mission trip in Haiti. In the middle of a church service, my dad whispered, “Honey, what are your fifty-year goals?”

Prior to that moment I hadn’t given a lot of thought to this topic. But over the next weeks, I set out to respond to his question. Of course, I didn’t know what my specific ministry path would look like. But I tried to record what I wanted to be true of my life in fifty years if God gave me that much time.

As a teen sitting in that Haitian church, fifty years seemed like an eternity away. I couldn’t have imagined how quickly that time would pass or how easy it would be to fritter away days, months, years—a lifetime.

Less than two years after I wrote those goals, my dad died suddenly of a heart attack. I’m so thankful for his efforts to encourage me to live a purposeful life to the glory of God.