I’ve never been very patient. I may appear to have a cool exterior and take things as they come most of the time, but I have always been terrible at containing my cool under the surface. Whenever God plays the “wait and see” game with me, that’s when I get most insecure in my faith and in my life. I just want to see the answers now and worry about the destruction I leave behind once I see where I’m going.
Of course, these little moments of impatience have come within the stable foundation of knowing literally “where” I was going to be and what I was going to be doing. For the last five summers, I knew that the next year would take me back to Lexington and my life in and around UK. But of course, heading into the fall of 2009, I had a good feeling that this past year would be my last in Lexington. And so thus the plan was set: complete the MIC program, look for a teaching job somewhere in Kentucky, and go from there.
I have had a bizarre last six months. Let me go through some of the timeline of what my proposed plans for the fall of 2010 and potentially beyond have been…
Early December: Still on par for starting teaching in 2010, but undergo a rough first week at Woodford County
Mid-December: Talk to my friend Luke about possibly doing some ministry next summer and maybe beyond
Christmas: Feel God is leading me to do ministry, somewhere, instead of going straight into teaching
Late December: Investigate Mission Arlington in Dallas about possible internships
January: Find Touching Miami With Love in, where else, Miami about possible and promising internship for summer and the following year
February: Discover Street Reach in Memphis on a snow day in Lexingtonas a better opportunity
March: Completing applications and stuff for Street Reach, and visit Memphis to check the ministry out…we’re in “all systems go” for spending the next year in Memphis
Then things got crazy…
Late April: Memphis opportunity falls through due to application issue, triggering bonzai research into other opportunities
Finals Week: Narrow possible options to two — intentional community experience in Chapel Hill, NC or Urban Promise in Wilmington, DE…after interviews, I decide on Urban Promise
May: Africa, and as I type, I realize there’s no words to describe the wonder of it all, but basically I feel on the beaches of Senegal God calling me to the classroom immediately, reversing all feelings I had from the previous five months…additionally, a visit to a small, Christian school births dreams of teaching history in Senegal for a year
Late May: Weigh the costs of possibly returning in August to Senegal versus returning the Kentucky high school classroom, and decide on the latter…I decline an invitation to Urban Promise and focus my energies on the job hunt
And here we are on June 16th, my 23rd and a half birthday. Two months ago, I was headed to Memphis. One month ago, I was headed to Wilmington. Today, I have absolutely no idea. All I know is that I’m playing golf tomorrow morning and eating dinner with a friend tomorrow night in Bowling Green. I have applied to what will be 14 schools by Friday, and I haven’t heard back about an interview yet, even though I feel an interview invitation will come within the next two weeks…hopefully…
But here’s the heart of the matter. I’ve been reading the blogs and looking at the pictures and hearing the stories of some of my peers who have abandoned the traditional college to career path and have struck up adventures of their own, be it Teach For America or foreign missions or some other fascinating tale. Meanwhile, it seems my immediate destiny is a classroom in Kentucky, which of course brings its own unique challenges but it’s not the adventure I craved. If Memphis had not fallen through, I would be there right now, irregardless of what I felt in Africa. I feel that’s a fact. I have to think that God crumpled that opportunity up so that my heart would be softened for the educational bombshell He dropped on me while in the small village of Guereo. And even in Guereo, if we didn’t have the chance to visit and spend time in the schools, even before the mighty revelation that BCS (the Christian Hogwarts of Senegal) became three days before our exit, I feel I would be heading to Wilmington on Monday. Indeed, Wilmington did offer me the chance to work in an inner-city missions environment for a year, if not longer, but by that time I felt God leading me back to where I was waaaaaaaaaaaay back in December: to teach, here, in the Bluegrass.
Don’t get me wrong…I do very much want to teach in the fall. The wild rush of adrenaline that I got when I visited ACS for the first time in quite a while a couple weeks past confirmed that feeling. But I do very much want a spectacular story and a spectacular life experience, and I question whether this teaching in Kentucky deal at 23 years old will provide that. I so desperately wish to not live that “normal” life, to travel down that “normal” path. I so desperately wanted to sell myself out for Christ for a year or two or five in the form of a “cool” or transformative experience before teaching, but God said, “uhhhhhhh, no.” And I’m still not sure how I feel about that, especially during this slow-going in the 270 as I churn out teaching application after teaching application and drives literally thousands of miles across the state dropping off resumes and meeting principals, all with the hope that I will get a call soon for an interview which could perhaps turn into a job.
And so I wait. I wait to see which door God is going to open, and I wonder about just why I am here at home this summer rather than chasing the daylight of Christ’s glory in Memphis, Wilmington, or Senegal. Without the safety net of Lexington which has been present for the better part of five years, this waiting business is an incredible and challenging test of faith. Not being sure what is happening next drives me up the wall. Maybe someday I will realize that these last six months prove that their are no certainties in life, only God holding my little hand as I stumble blindly through the transition from college to adulthood.
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