I’m honored today to introduce you to Carol Ghattas. Carol was a student in my first full-time youth ministry a lot more years ago than I care to think about. From Day 1, Carol was a special young lady. God’s hand has been on her all these years. Her story is worth sharing. Read, enjoy, and follow her blog. The link is at the bottom.
I’m what you might think of as a typical Southern, white Christian woman who’s lived anything but a typical Southern white life. I blame it on The Call.
I got mine at the age of ten, and it changed the course of my life.
I’d been a believer for two whole years, nurtured in a wonderful Christian family and strong church home, but it was after hearing a missionary speak that I heard God telling me: “Carol, you are not going to live the rest of your life in Murfreesboro, you’re going to serve me overseas.”
And I did – though not right away of course, but that didn’t mean I was isolated from the nations. Not only did my parents sponsor international college students, but when a group of refugees from Laos came to my town, I got involved in our church’s outreach to them.
After graduating college, I left home to spend two years in Ivory Coast, West Africa. I wanted to taste the life to which I knew God was calling me. My “tasting” became more of a baptism by fire, as I was faced with realities of mission life:
Even with the harshness of the lessons God was teaching me, I could not push aside his call on my life. I was compelled to seek his forgiveness for my pride and sin, while submitting my clay jar for further use. During a prayer retreat in Ivory Coast, his voice was clear that he wanted me to serve among Muslims. I began seminary in the States with the goal of pursuing full-time mission service in the Middle East.
That’s when God joined my call with the call of an Egyptian-American pastor, Raouf Ghattas.
God knew my weaknesses and allowed me the honor of being joined in service with one of the few men who were actually called to work among Muslims. Raouf was the perfect one for me, and for the next twenty years we served in the Middle East and North Africa. This was the fulfillment of that childhood call in ways I could never have imagined, as I witnessed God at work among the nations.
Closed doors don’t mean a closed call.
We had moved many times during those twenty years, but it was ultimately security issues related to a recently published book we’d written that forced our return to the United States. God brought us back to my, now not-so-small hometown to find that Muslims had moved into the area and were building a mosque. The early years of our “retirement” from full-time mission work, became another full-time local ministry to the Arabs in our county. We started a new church for Arabic speakers and began training Americans in outreach to Muslims.
When my husband died suddenly in 2015, I wasn’t sure what to do. I was working full-time as a librarian and serving as administrator and translator at the church. For the next three years, I pressed on, despite the fog of grief, because I knew God was not finished with the church, though he was moving it into a new era, with new leadership. When we hired a full-time pastor in 2019, I knew God was leading me in a new direction.
Let others speak into your call.
It took time to be at peace with what he was saying to me, mainly out of a sense of responsibility and guilt over leaving the Arabic church. Yet, God knows how to help us through the transitions. He kept sending people my way, former colleagues, friends from the Middle East and even family members who listened and served as sounding boards and counselors to help me navigate this new way.
Some of these helped me see that I needed to take time to grieve. I’d lost, not only my husband, but my father as well. Keeping busy kept me from losing control, but I had to admit that I’d lost the joy of service. I dreaded going to church, translating, and keeping up with people. The love that had compelled me was waning. I knew I had to step back and start saying “no” until I could be refilled myself.
Call doesn’t change – though expression may.
No longer at my husband’s side in service, I began to see how God was moving me back to a “first love” in writing. First in journals, then on Facebook, a blog and in books, God began to show me that though my life had changed, my call hasn’t. He’sjust using a different way for me to serve him and share with others. I come home from work at night and cannot rest until I’ve worked on something related to a writing project or blog post. I’m compelled in a new way now, still by his love, still by that love pouring out for others – all, I pray, to the growth of the Kingdom and his glory.
For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again. (2 Corinthians 5:14-15 NIV)
May you be compelled today to live solely for Christ.
Grace and Peace.
A delightful way to begin my day on the back porch with the sun just peeking out above the tree line.
God is good.