Life is not like linear algebra: that’s a known fact, but as I was talking to a friend this morning, I was realizing how very true that is – especially in this season of life where I came back from an intense experience abroad and am preparing for my final year of college and then …?? Where am I going? What am I supposed to DO with these new perspectives I’m trying to process? Where is it taking me? I want to figure it out: now. Unfortunately, I’m learning that you can’t figure it out all at once.
Last semester I walked into my professor’s office on a Friday afternoon and proceeded to talk to him for an hour about life after graduation and grad school. He is one of the reasons I miss Gordon so much right now – I miss those conversations with professors who not only teach me, but also listen to me and care about me as a student and person. They provide advice that continues to be helpful, even hours, days, and months after the conversation ends. After giving some practical advice about grad school, he said: “Alyssa, God has plans for your life. Vocation is real” and he told me how as he looks back on his life, he sees how God has led him to where he is today, even though it didn’t necessarily make sense as he was taking those steps.
I walked away from that conversation encouraged and hopeful. Yet I think that the implications of what he said are much bigger. Life isn’t necessarily a straight path and sometimes I really wish it were. I wish that my semester would lead me immediately to point B and from there I would continue on to point C and then D. But it isn’t like that. While I was in Costa Rica a friend of mine emailed me and encouraged me to be patient with myself and said that you don’t know how these experiences are going to influence you in the months and years to come. That was a freeing statement for me – freedom for me to let God do the work in my life, for him to use the experiences and conversations to change and shape the way I think and see the world. Yet for me, this requires a lot of patience and a lot of waiting and confusion because that process often doesn’t make sense. But I hope to be a person where at the end of my life, I can look back and see how God used and placed people, relationships, conversations, and experiences to lead me to wherever he wants me to be and however I think and react to situations around me.
“God has plans for your life.” I am honestly not sure how to respond to this. A few months ago that statement excited me, but now it makes me a little fearful and I am trying to understand what my commitment is to a God who will lead me in and through the uncertainties and confusions of life. He might lead me to the right and left, up and down, east and west, and while I know that these plans are good, I feel the tug in another direction because of my own fear and a desire to follow an easy path of doing what I believe makes sense as is "part of the equation" (you know – y=mx +b).
So where is my semester and my experiences taking me and changing me? I don’t know yet. I know it’s caused me to question a lot of things and to really seek understanding of who Jesus is and what his message means to me and to people around the world. It’s given me new family and friends and a host of conversation topics. But I also need to wait. I need to listen and learn and explore and jump into life and wait expectantly for God to use and teach me things …and to let him use Nicaragua and Cuba and Costa Rica as part of the picture and lessons that are continuing to unfold. There is still so much to be learned from my time in Latin America and the years before it and weeks so far after it, and I can’t do it all at once. It will probably be a lot of zig-zaggy lessons leading me here and then there…but I need to be patient, willing, and ready for wherever they take me.
No comments:
Post a Comment