Whose Journey is this anyway?

When I moved to Gressier in January of 2011…I felt like I had lived a whole life already…and to some degree I had.  I tried to live the life I thought I was supposed to and the life I thought I wanted to live.

 

I LOVED high school, mostly because I was so consumed with myself and how many friends I had and what I accomplished…Homecoming Court, Prom Queen…I thought THAT was what high school was about.  And although I was a bit misled…I would talk to everyone, and would feel that certain twinge of sadness when someone was standing by themselves…I didn’t always know what to do with that…but I knew that I didn’t ever want anyone to feel unloved.

 

I worked my tail off to get to a wonderful school (shout out Tulane University) on full scholarship…(I showed up at a state representatives house to ask for his Legislative Scholarship- full paid scholarship to Tulane….but that’s a story for another time).  I absolutely LOVED Tulane…I loved my classes, my professors, the freedom that came with school…and then Hurricane Katrina hit my sophomore year.  I thought my dreams were crushed…I ended up at Washington and Lee University in such a divinely driven plan that I still have a hard time wrapping my head around it.  Here at W & L, the Lord started cracking at my hard outer shell…He started calling my heart…He started beckoning my spirit.  I had no idea what to do with this…I started working with the homeless in New Orleans after the Hurricane.  My life was such a roller coaster of what I wanted to do versus what HE wanted me to do.

 

As a Tulane University cheerleader for the last two years of college, I was in two different realms completely.  Helping to lead worship every Monday night while spending the weekend before cheering, drinking and being your typical self-focused college student.  Every night, EVERY night I went to bed wondering what in the world I was going to do, how God would EVER use a selfish, broken, people-pleasing person like me.  When I graduated in 2008 I had very little direction…so when my friend Jordan said she was going to Africa, I literally just jumped on the trip with her and spent that summer in Uganda.  God started to open my eyes even more this trip…He woke up a place in my heart that had been dying to come out…Loving the helpless, Loving the needy, Loving Children who have no one.

 

When I returned home I just expected God to SHOUT at me what to do with this pain….PAIN that I felt for these children.  I waited, and waited on him.  In the midst of waiting…I got a great job, my dream job.  I got an amazing car, my dream car.  I got a boyfriend, fiance to be exact.  But yet, there was still something missing.  Something BIG missing.  As I acquired more and more of what I thought I wanted…I got farther and farther away from being joyful, farther away from abiding in HIM. Farther away From HIS voice beckoning my Spirit.  It was as if I could almost hear him say…”Sure, you can choose that path, if you want to…if you think that YOU are in charge of this Journey.”

 

As the doubts grew with what I had chosen versus what GOD had chosen grew….Everything began shaking.  After a planned wedding, rocky relationship and finally a broken engagement, it was evident he was not who GOD had for me.  God had BIGGER plans for him and for me.  I was confused, but had no choice but to TRUST God.

 

Then, my desire to work in my perfect job started fading.  I knew in my mind that I WANTED this.  Didn’t everyone want to have an amazing job, with amazing people, and amazing opportunities?  Wasn’t this what I wanted?  Great money, great friends, great fun?

But I was empty.  There was a nagging in the back of my mind.  Is this really what you want?  Is this really what GOD has made you for?  What about your heart for fatherless children?  For the needy, for orphans, for loving people who desperately need love.  I began to justify in my mind how that was a phase…or that wasn’t real…and then I visited Haiti.  As I visited in April of 2010…my heart BROKE for these people.  I got physically ill the first night after seeing dead bodies, starving children and hurting people in their broken lives.  My mind couldn’t wrap around the extremes….my “Journey”…my “Life” that I had chosen…and then Haiti.

 

I came to Haiti again in August of 2010 and visited Gressier randomly with a group of people.  As we walked around on Bellevue Mountain for about 45 minutes…my mind sort of wandered.  How could anyone move here?  There was SO much need.  Why would anyone want to move here?  Where would you begin?  I left there that day thinking this was a task for someone else…my mind did not have the slightest thought of maybe that someone was me…until God started working again.  Relentlessly.  I dreamed about Haiti…about Gressier every night.

 

I dreamed about the one little girl who I saw when I was walking up to Bellevue Mountain.  Her leg was burned…no one who was with me wanted to clean it…no one wanted to look at it.  I, Megan Boudreaux, who couldn’t even watch Grey’s Anatomy without covering her eyes when someone was stuck with a needle was suddenly cleaning her wound.  As I poured a little water into the wound, flies and bugs started coming up…the only thing that was keeping me from gagging was saying the name of Jesus over and over under my breath.  I treated her wound and left…that night I dreamed about her and every night until I moved there in January.  I dreamed about how there were so many children in Gressier that seemed to have no one…nothing…their eyes looked tired and their young bodies looked worn out.

When I finally, FINALLY, let go of what I thought I wanted on this Journey called life.  I realized instead that MY Journey of MY life was so far off…and that HIS Journey for HIS life through me had just begun….

God uses broken.  Selfish.  Scared.  Hurting people.  He doesn’t only call “Qualified“…“Put together People”…I realized when my eyes were OFF of myself and Focused on HIM and His desire…my life was not so bad after all…as I began to realize how EASY it was to TRUST Him and be Faithful in Obeying Him.  God started moving.  And started moving fast.

I, in and of myself could never have moved to a place in Haiti by myself.  In fact, if you ever asked me about that I would say, it’s stupid.  Just plain stupid.  I didn’t know the language, didn’t know how I was going to eat, or where I would get water.  I was naive, young and alone.  I Didn’t know what God wanted me to do.  I just went.  I regretted that decision for the first 3 days in January of 2011 as I sat in my rented house in Gressier eating Cliff Bars in my room by myself wondering what I had gotten into.  I cried, and yelled and was fearful and negative and alone.  I thought I had failed before I even began.  And then in those moments in my house with no electricity, no running water, no English, no anything…I finally, for the first time ever….let down all my guards and really heard God’s voice.  Without any distractions and without any outside guidance I was able to finally OBEY.  To OBEY Him without any strings attached…without any confusion.

So I began to truly live.  And learn.  And Grow.  And Follow HIS voice…and only HIS voice.

 

When I reflect back on this journey of where I have been and where God has taken me…my mind whirls around.  This burning FIRE in my bones (Jer. 20:9) for furthering HIS name, for showing how INadequate WE are and how ADEQUATE HE is.  The BURNING desire to show HIS children about their FREEDOM in Him and IDENTITY in Him continues to grow.  The FIRE that grows to FIGHT for the Fatherless and the hurting, neglected and abused.

The Lord continues to amaze me with His incredible plans.  I canNOT do this on my own…nothing that Respire Haiti has done was done by Megan Boudreaux, everything that has happened has been because of HIS leading and guidance.  After spending the first 24 years of my life trying to follow MY journey, the last year has been the most freeing, calming, scary and exciting year ever because I have given it to Him and to HIS Journey.