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Writer's pictureJacque Adkins

One Simple Question

It was a simple question. But it was one I had not dared to ask myself.


What are you doing?


On the surface, I could answer that question with a long list of responsibilities that filled my days as a volunteer at my church.


  • Small group leader

  • Small group ministry director

  • Service producer

  • Programming team member

  • Baptism coordinator

  • Leadership team member


The more I did, the more I was asked to do. The more I was expected to do.


But now, here I stood in my kitchen, unexpectedly pregnant with my youngest daughter, face to face with the question that I had been afraid to consider. The question that would flood my world with the light I needed to finally start to see things clearly.


What are you doing?


What WAS I doing?


My life was not sustainable. Up until now, my husband had sacrificially picked up the slack with our older children as I volunteered close to sixty hours a week at the church. But our lives were about to shift. And my husband was coming to a breaking point. He couldn’t keep caring for our kids at this level AND building his career. And I couldn’t see a way to be a mom to three kids, a wife to my husband, and keep doing ALL of the things I was doing at church. Something had to give.


But was scaling back even an option?

Wasn’t I called to be sold out to the Kingdom?

God would take care of my family if I was faithful to His work, right?


What are you doing?


A question asked, not by someone who didn’t understand ministry, but by someone who had picked up her entire life and moved to the Middle East to be a missionary. Someone who had gone to one of the hardest places on the planet to share the Gospel with no expectation of return.


And SHE was asking ME, “What are you doing?”


Was it possible that something in my life just wasn’t right? Was it possible that my understanding of ministry and God’s calling had gone off course?


Was it possible that my desire to serve God and His Kingdom had morphed into something else? Was my life still about the Gospel, or had I been chasing after things that would meet some deep, unholy, and unspoken need in myself?


What are you doing?


A simple question? Yes.

But one that changed everything.

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