...things would have been different. As I sit in the happily buzzing school cafeteria, watching everyone rush on over to the School Daze student event to get free food, I wonder where I would be right now if I'd done things the "right" way.
If I'd had my own way, then my inclination for adventure and my fear of making "different" decisions would have placed me on a much different college campus several hours away from my familiar stomping grounds. If I'd had my own way, I wouldn't have experienced the providence of God in the most caring, immediate ways that I very much needed. If I'd had my own way, I wouldn't have thrived and grown in exactly the ways that would build me up for life.
God has this way of giving you a giant brain, full of billions of neurons and synapses and thoughts and genes and perceptions and temperaments and ideas and personality traits. He also tends to give you certain turning points in your life when you naively believe that you've completely figured out everything there is to know about your brain and your personality and what you want from life. You feel confident. You know everything there is to know about yourself.
You get into your head that you have it all figured out. You're facing your future like: I know what I want. I want to move away to a small, private college and study science and art and travel the world and get a job after I graduate and not get into a serious relationship until I'm 25 and definitely not get married until almost 30 and never do college and a real career job together because that's too much work.. Because that is me and that is what I want. Right?
Wrong. I sit now a mere ten miles from my childhood home. I never moved out. I never went to a private college. I never traveled the world. I got knee-deep into a pretty serious relationship at age 18. I did college and a real career job at the same time. It wasn't too much work.
I still do all of this. and the greatest secret of all of my hard-planned ideas failing and falling away into the dust is that I am incredibly happy right where I am.
wait.
what?
that's right. It's pretty good right here.
well how did that happen?
Let me tell you how I got to this fantastic place. With (1) complete and total indecision, and (2) virtually zero career options/ideas, and with (3) no ways or means to meet the financial requirements of my far-fetched dreams. I say this only to show that it was not my nobility that got me anywhere. I didn't know what to do. It was my support system, my family, my faith, my friends, that helped me achieve.
I wouldn't recommend these avenues for everyone. In fact, if you know what you want to do, and you have a great career idea, and you have the means of executing that dream successfully, then do it. My point in saying this is that if you're like me and you have no idea, then it's okay. you won't die. you will survive, I promise. you're only 18. there's a whole lifetime of growth and adventure ahead of you.
If you don't know what to do, that's fine. Maybe you just haven't figured it out yet. Maybe you'll know tomorrow, or the next day, or next year. It's okay. You won't be "behind" everyone else who has made their decisions on time and has a 5-year plan. You will be behind if you just naively jump into the college you want, with a random major, with no financial adequacy. You'll burn out pretty quickly and waste a lot of time, resources, and money.
So what if you need a year to figure it out? As long as you work hard, don't give up, and keep pursuing something, then you will be able to succeed eventually.
I took a chance, a really difficult chance. Since I was used to my life of predictability, I wanted to take the next predictable step, which was a trip to a far away college to study liberal arts. Instead, I took the path less traveled. I didn't go to college. I stayed at home and kept working at a terrible, part-time job with the city. There were very little career options there. I had no idea what to do or where to go to school.
At first, I felt like a failure. All of my friends were able to go to school and experience the exhilarating life of college on a new campus with new friends and new activities. Everyone else knew what they were doing. Why didn't I? Why was I stuck in the same spot?
There is, I promise, a redeeming value to this story. That initial step of faith, which feels like failure at first, began to feel like it was right. It slowly began to feel like I wasn't a failure. It began to look like maybe I had made a pretty good choice.
Because when I let go of my "predictable" ways, I was able to take hold of the uncertain, still-growing, developing ways of me and my giant brain. I was, for the first time, able to make choices that were my own. they did not belong to anyone else. they were my own, independent choices.
A good job popped up, out of nowhere. The most caring, respectable, really nice guy popped up, out of nowhere. A great opportunity at a nearby school came to my attention. Yes, out of nowhere.
But yet, it really wasn't completely "out of nowhere." It was out of God's great grace. Within three short months, I had found a career I think I like. I found a school that I really liked. The really nice guy turned out to be a pretty good candidate for a relationship.
My life changed. It is still changing. That is the beauty of freedom in Christ. If I had made my own choices, it would have turned into a much different, less-rewarding story of routine choices and ideas that wouldn't have flourished. It wouldn't have become the enjoyable thing that it has become.
I'm thankful. I'm thankful that I didn't figure it all out. I'm glad that my own selfish ideas didn't work out. That, instead, I learned to thrive in today. That is where I found the love of God. In today, in everything around me, in every student I walk by, in every professor that is stuck in the mundane routine, in every customer that seeks an answer to their problems, in every time I walk this earth with the ones I love. This God is everywhere, and He is working through so many different and unexpected ways.
He worked in my life. He did a work that I could never have done on my own. He'll work in yours, too. Just be patient, wait, and seek wisdom.
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