Please, God, Don't Make Me Go!: A Foot-Dragger's Memoir

What’s a comfortable—and cowardly—suburbanite to do when her husband wants to move their young family to Colombia, South America, so he can teach missionaries’ kids?

Linda K. Thomas has always planned to chase the American dream. Adventure doesn’t appeal to her, and she’s ill-equipped for missions work. She begs God, “Please don’t make me go!” but after months of soul-searching, she hears him say, “Go!”

So, with flimsy faith and wobbly courage, she sets out with her husband and kids on a life-changing adventure at the end of the road in the middle of nowhere with Wycliffe Bible Translators.

When culture shock and tropical heat threaten to undo Linda, she’s tempted to run away and hike back to the U.S. Instead, she fights to settle in and soon falls in love with her work alongside modern-day heroes of the faith disguised as regular folks. God has sent her where she didn’t know she wanted to go.

Once life is under control and easy, she gets a surprise—a request to go to one of the world’s most dangerous drug-dealing regions where hundreds of people have lost their lives. Colombia is perilous in other ways, too. Marxist guerrillas don’t like Americans or missionaries, proving it with bombs, kidnapping, and eventually murder.

Linda won't trust God to help her make the trip, and she can’t trust herself, either. Gripped by anxiety, she longs to stay in the only safe place, the mission center. She prays, “Please, God, don’t make me go!” But once again He urges, “Go!” Thus begins a fierce internal battle.

In this heartwarming, sometimes humorous, sometimes shocking memoir, you’ll walk alongside a young wife and mother as she faces two universal struggles: choosing between her plans and God's, and choosing faith and courage over fear and cowardice.

Please, God, Don’t Make Me Go! will motivate the timid to cancel membership in the Society of the Faint-Hearted, and it will inspire every reader to enjoy God more and embrace new adventures He dreams up.