Raised in an actively Christian home, I have always heard that we're supposed to give our lives — every aspect of our lives — to God. The call has always been clear to me, and not as some mystical vocation to which only ministers and anchorites can attain. Ephesians 2:9-10 declares that God has prepared specific works for all of us:

For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

Believing this, from childhood I have been "giving my life to God." But I don't always believe He's accepted it.

Maybe I'm waiting for a cataclysmic acceptance speech. I say "Here I am, send me," and then I wait for fire and glory and seraphim crying "Holy, holy, holy." But to wait for God to accept my life is to fail to believe what He tells me: that He has already accepted me. He has already prepared good works for me. I've said, "Take my life," and He's taken it.

What I need to walk in that reality are open eyes and ready hands.

These past months have been a startling reminder of how much and how practically God is in control. Like many of us, I make grandiose plans at the beginning of each new year. In 2009, I was just coming off a hectic performing arts tour, and the aromas and traditions of Christmas welcomed me home as into a whole new era. This year I would slip right into my best schedule ever. I would be disciplined in my sleeping and rising habits. I would pray, read the Word, enjoy God. I would revel in the presence of my family and friends. I would finish up every loose end in my freelance business, settle all my finances, and head into the new year burden-free.

Then I got sick.

Amy Carmichael said in Rose from Brier that a sick bed "can be a place of dullness of spirit as well as of body." Sick, I did not tie up loose ends. I did not study, pray, and worship. Instead, I slept, read over-dramatic novels, and watched old BBC sitcoms for hours. I got borderline depressive and lost all verve, resolve, or desire to do anything at all.

This was obviously not how I intended to spend the new year. But it was, I've come to realize, how God intended me to spend it. I was all set to go blazing into 2010 full of my own plans and abilities, and instead He reminded me that my spirit may be willing, but my flesh is weak. Giving my life to God is not an opportunity to manifest my gifts, but to manifest His. This year — and my life — is not mine.

That became crystal-clear in the two weeks that followed. First, God manifested His sovereignty over my time and finances, forcing several big changes in my work contracts. Then came the calls to specific "good works," each one cleverly disguised as an inconvenience. I fully intended to spend February of 2010 in Florida, but my ability to book a ticket was delayed by frustrating circumstances.

In the meantime, my partner in performing arts asked if I wanted to perform with a Christian artists' initiative in Vancouver during the Olympics. I said yes. Our application was submitted two months after the deadline, but they accepted it. In February, when my plans were to be in Florida, I was serving God in Vancouver.

Days before that, my schedule had a monkey wrench thrown into it when I was forced to come home from out of town on a Tuesday when I'd wanted to stay until Wednesday. I was disgruntled until I got a phone call from a missionary friend flying into my home airport on an emergency. Could I pick her up on Tuesday afternoon? Well, of course, because God had already arranged for me to be in town. (My missionary friend ended up staying for two weeks and helping us prepare for Vancouver.)

Every step I take in this new year, I find that God is one step ahead of me, moving forward with His plans and fitting me into them in ways I don't at all expect. If I forget that God has accepted my life into His service, I can be annoyed and thrown off by all the interruptions. But if I remember that God has actually taken my life, if I look for His purposes, I find Him constantly at work. Every day is a day of divine appointments, of wondrous coincidences, of God Himself.

For me, service to God has been happening in relatively small ways. For others, the call has been much bigger. My friend Sarah has been living in Haiti for several months, teaching school on a YWAM base an hour and a half from Port-au-Prince. As I was in the midst of trading my schedule for God's, Sarah was in the midst of the headlines. Her plans were to teach school. God's plans were different. An e-mail update from Sarah read:

I empty bed pans, I clean out wounds, I remove old bandages and replace them with fresh ones, I clean out and place ointment on holes in people's heads, arms, hands, and legs, I pat people's foreheads when they scream in pain. These are things I've never done before.

On Wednesday I was asked to [assist the one trained nurse on the base] as we are scared she is going to burn out soon. Audrey told me that I could walk around and see who needed attending to and then attend to them. I just stared at her, thinking, She can't really mean what she is saying, I don't know the first thing about broken legs and arms, huge holes in people's bodies! Or, Audrey said, I could help her. I decided that sounded like a better idea.

I watched as she found a girl who had no more skin on half of her hand. Audrey gently cleaned and put ointment on the hand. I helped her figure out how to creatively wrap the hand so it might be protected and heal. Halfway through I knew I had to start helping other people. "I could do this," I said and got up. "All right," Audrey said and motioned to me where the plastic gloves were. I couldn't help but grin as I put on the gloves. "Good thing I'm 'trained' as a doctor!" I laughed. Audrey laughed too. "We just have to do what we have to do," she said.

Sarah's updates are a constant reminder that God will use our lives as He sees fit; that He will place us where He wants us "for such a time as this." Whether that means sending me to the airport on a Tuesday when I'd planned to be out of town or transforming Sarah into a nurse when she'd planned to be a teacher, He has prepared good works for us to walk in. That may be inconvenient, but it's more than that. It's a wonder and a great grace. The God of the universe has a place for us in His plans.

This is what I'm learning most in 2010. That "giving my life to God" isn't about doing Him a favor, but about stepping into an ongoing work that is sometimes adventurous and sometimes tedious but always bigger than I am, always worth more than my own plans would be, and always conferring greater worth on my own life by the grace and pleasing of God.

It's unpredictable and inconvenient, and I hope it will always be this way.