Purpose, reason, and faith
Reality check time: I have seven working days as a VISTA left. Ok, six and a half, because I'm bailing early on Monday.
I'm trapped in that weird paradox of feeling like I still have so much left to accomplish, and yet looking back and realizing just how far I've come and how much I've learned. As I lay awake last night, just thinking about all the wonderful things continuing to develop in both my professional and personal life, and thinking about all the wonderful things going on in my friend's lives as well, I realized one simple, yet strikingly profound truth: God has a plan.
I don't believe that life is merely a random assortment of chance occurrences and coincidences. I believe, and have learned over the years, that God has a purpose and a reason for every event that has taken place in my life, even when I don't see it or understand. Which, most of the time, I don't. I thought my job at UK Biology was the real deal, but it turned out to be unbelievably challenging and draining at times, and I ended up miserable with some pretty hard feelings. I thought this VISTA experience was going to be a big mistake, another stint in a seemingly endless line of jobs, but it's turned into a manifestation of opportunities and open doors beyond my wildest imagination. I thought, after reading countless horror stories on a VISTA forum, that my experience was going to be just that, horrible, but it's been far from it! I thought I was going to get the heck out of Kentucky after I graduated from Berea, but now I can't imagine living anywhere else! I thought I would never get close to anyone, but now that has a very real possibility of coming true for me, and I'm equally terrified and excited. Our lives never go exactly as we plan, and I think there's such a beauty in that.
For me, I take a strange comfort in knowing that God has a plan. Or maybe it's not strange at all. Maybe it's faith: releasing and relinquishing that trust into the hands of someone who certainly knows what He's doing. That is the very definition of faith- trust in something or someone intangible that you cannot prove. "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." -Hebrews 11:1
A week from Friday, my life is going to look entirely different. And I'm actually ok with that.
I'm trapped in that weird paradox of feeling like I still have so much left to accomplish, and yet looking back and realizing just how far I've come and how much I've learned. As I lay awake last night, just thinking about all the wonderful things continuing to develop in both my professional and personal life, and thinking about all the wonderful things going on in my friend's lives as well, I realized one simple, yet strikingly profound truth: God has a plan.
I don't believe that life is merely a random assortment of chance occurrences and coincidences. I believe, and have learned over the years, that God has a purpose and a reason for every event that has taken place in my life, even when I don't see it or understand. Which, most of the time, I don't. I thought my job at UK Biology was the real deal, but it turned out to be unbelievably challenging and draining at times, and I ended up miserable with some pretty hard feelings. I thought this VISTA experience was going to be a big mistake, another stint in a seemingly endless line of jobs, but it's turned into a manifestation of opportunities and open doors beyond my wildest imagination. I thought, after reading countless horror stories on a VISTA forum, that my experience was going to be just that, horrible, but it's been far from it! I thought I was going to get the heck out of Kentucky after I graduated from Berea, but now I can't imagine living anywhere else! I thought I would never get close to anyone, but now that has a very real possibility of coming true for me, and I'm equally terrified and excited. Our lives never go exactly as we plan, and I think there's such a beauty in that.
For me, I take a strange comfort in knowing that God has a plan. Or maybe it's not strange at all. Maybe it's faith: releasing and relinquishing that trust into the hands of someone who certainly knows what He's doing. That is the very definition of faith- trust in something or someone intangible that you cannot prove. "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." -Hebrews 11:1
A week from Friday, my life is going to look entirely different. And I'm actually ok with that.
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