Chapter 6
A Change of Plans
Life rolled on, and my senior year was fast approaching. My heart’s desire was to be a band director or to further my education and become a professional classical saxophonist. In November of 1967, I gave my senior recital with piano and orchestra accompaniment. I loved performing. I should have seen something then regarding my life’s work, but I didn’t.
After my recital, during the last semester, I was to student teach. How I’d looked forward to this experience! This would be where “the rubber meets the road,” and I was primed to put into practice all that I had studied and learned. Of course, it was a little scary, but I was ready to jump in with both feet. This would surely be an exciting time.
During my Christmas break in December, I was invited to go to Rock Eagle 4-H Camp in Macon, Georgia, to attend a weeklong Christmas retreat sponsored by Campus Crusade. The speaker was teaching about love — how we should love one another — and I was thoroughly enjoying my week. One night during the retreat, alone in my cabin, I was sitting in the living room reading a magazine. Suddenly I sensed Jesus standing in front of me. There was no fear, just electrifying awe; but I was so certain of his presence that I knew if I looked up from my magazine, I would surely see his sandals. I sensed that he was opening the window, and something flew out of me. Then, as quickly and silently as he had come, he went away. Suddenly my whole life changed. Gone was my life’s dream of being a saxophonist. Gone was the desire to teach music. Gone was my intense love for music. In place of these was a deep desire to follow God. Now I knew it was not I who was taking God into my career but God who was taking me into his purpose.
Many people have said to me, “Well, Sue, you could have been a Christian band director.” Yes, I believe I could have, but God needed to free me of what had become my bondage to music. Also God saw ahead and knew that I needed scriptural teaching and a good, solid Christian foundation. I believe he knew that if I taught school, I wouldn’t get that solid teaching. He had other plans, and I just needed to adjust to his ways.
(Let me interject here that I believe a Christian can serve God in almost any profession; no one job is more “spiritual” than another, because God tells us that we’re all part of the Body of Christ. However, in my case, for this particular time, God had called me out of one job and into another. This was his plan for me, and readers should not take it as a judgment or as an imperative on themselves.)
I finished my student teaching, but I found that I was no longer interested in pursuing this profession. I had lost my desire, my direction. God had replaced them with a wonderful yearning to go into Christian work. I was motivated and looked to obey his call. Strangely enough, the only Christian work that I knew was Campus Crusade, so I went to California and applied for staff — and was rejected.
Surely there was a mistake. He had spoken, and I had answered. They obviously didn’t understand. What was happening? I was overwhelmed with confusion and fear. What had God said? I thought he said full-time Christian work, yet the only Christian work that I knew of had just told me no. I returned to Kentucky rejected, distraught, and miserable. I began looking for teaching jobs, but my heart just wasn’t in it.
One day a friend asked me to go to a Christian coffeehouse in the basement of a new ministry, Christ Center, that had just opened in Lexington. As I entered the dimly lit, damp “Catacombs” coffeehouse, God spoke to me. “Sue, this is the place I want you.”
I found out later that Christ Center was an inner-city ministry and that twenty-one college graduates had moved into this old school building and were renovating it and ministering to all types of people in Lexington. They had a college ministry, a ghetto ministry, high school and adult Bible studies, a music and drama ministry, and a large, thriving coffeehouse ministry. Much to my parents’ horror, I moved in, sold my car, and lived at Christ Center for three years without making any money.
For three years, God took care of not only me but also all the workers there. The solid biblical teaching I received under Paul Petrie, the soulful worship and adoration I learned to offer to the Lord, and the work I did (I ran the coffeehouse) were all gifts from God to nurture, care for, and “grow me” in his kingdom. I’m so thankful that he chose to send me to these people. It was there that I got my first taste of walking by faith, merely a beginning and a hint of what was to follow.
“So don’t worry at all about having enough food and clothing. . . . But your heavenly Father already knows perfectly well that you need them, and he will give them to you if you give him first place in your life and live as he wants you to.”
—Matthew 5: 31-32 (Living Bible)