The Next Right Step

            I have been rejected more in the last three weeks than I have in my entire life. It started the day before graduation. Two hours before I had to take my last final to be exact. The job I really wanted, the one I had three interviews with, that I thought went really well, sent me a lovely email telling me I was great, but would not be working for them. I probably would have been fine if I hadn’t already picked out my new apartment in my new city. I probably would have been fine if my whole family hadn’t been in town reiterating over and over that they couldn’t wait to help me move for my cool new job they were so sure I’d get. I probably would have been fine if that rejection weren’t followed by five more over the span of two weeks.

            It is not that I am un-fine, exactly. But as an already sensitive person, this has just sent me on a particularly rough emotional roller coaster. Depending on the moment I sway between “I’m fine, I’ll just go where the wind takes me…” to “Where am I going to be in 10 minutes, in 10 months, in 10 years?!”  Mostly, I have been struggling to trust. Trust that God loves me, trust that there is good in all of this, trust that I have a purpose that I will eventually find, and have something to do with my life. I hate this. I hate not knowing the end of my story. Not just in the broad sense of wanting to know what the rest of my life has in store, but in a much more immediate way. Once the lease on my current apartment runs out (In just over 2 months) I have no clue what to do, where to go, how to live my life. I just have to trust, and I hate it.

           

Last week in church we were talking about Peter. In Matthew 14:22-36 Jesus walks on water in the midst of a storm, and calls Peter out of a boat to join him. Peter steps out of the boat and starts moving towards Jesus. But the passage says that when Peter saw the storm around him, he began to sink. When he takes his eyes off of Jesus, and notices the storm, and the waves, and the wind around him, he sinks. I ask God to help me trust all the time. I ask him, like Peter did, to call me out in faith to walk on water with him. But when he actually gives me the opportunity to walk with him, to trust him, I look not to his face, but instead notice the storms that surround me, and I sink. I think it is easy for me to ask things of God without really understanding what I am requesting. When I ask God to help me trust, or really to help me with anything, what I really mean is I would like my life to be calm and easy. I would like to wake up one day with all of the characteristics of Christ I didn’t have the day before. I don’t want to actually use any of my new found strength in Christ; I just want to know they’re in my arsenal.

If I am being really honest:

I want to be healed without first being broken
I want courage without having to face my fear,

I want hope without experiencing despair,

I want joy without knowing sorrow,

I want to trust without having to walk through a storm.
I want the end result in my life, but I reject the process to get there.

            This season I am in, this season of not knowing, of what feels like free falling, I reject it daily. I reject it because it is making me face things I don’t like about myself. I have realized how tightly I cling to control, how often I worry what others are thinking of my life choices, how scared I am to let go and just move forward, to trust God for the next right step. But that is where I am. I am trusting for the next right step. I am slowly letting go control, and the more I give it up the more I realize I never had any to begin with. I don’t know what the next year, or even the next few months hold for me. I haven’t had any divine revelations, or obvious signs from the Lord as to what I should do next in life. I do know that I where ever I go, whatever I do God goes before me to prepare the way. I know that if I keep my eyes on him and not on the storms around me I can begin to trust without boarders, and walk wherever God leads me. I know I can be confident in God to show me the next right step. 

Learning to Let Go

In exactly two months I will walk across a stage, move a tassel from right to left, and become and alumna of Florida State University. I have the next two months of my life planned by necessity, and then my color-coded organizer goes blank. It’s exhilarating. It’s terrifying. It's a dangerous freedom; gazing into the future and encountering an abyss.

Of course the question of what is next for me is always on the lips of someone, whether it be family, professors, random people I just met prying into my personal life. I get it, at this stage of my life I should probably have some kind of plan. But just so you know, it is incredibly annoying and intimidating trying to answer “what are you doing for the rest of your life?” when I just settled on a college major last spring. I change my mind about the future more times in a day than I can count.

I have started countless applications for everything from jobs, to grad school, only finishing my application for Peace Corps. But lately, I think about my friends moving on with their lives without me here. I think about all the possibilities I could be missing out on depending on the path I choose to walk. I have been asking myself if Peace Corps, or grad school are things I am genuinely passionate about, or things to enable my tendency to run away from the “real world” and adult decisions.

My recent discovery of  Social Entrepreneurship and Enterprise has just added another dose of confusion to the mix. Through a class I took on a whim because I needed another social sciences credit, I have found a field that intersects pretty much everything I am passionate about. There is a world of amazing businesses out there, with exciting mission statements and work environments. They make me wonder if running away from the responsibilities of the real world isn’t the answer to all my big life question marks. And yet, with all of these possibilities, and new opportunities, or perhaps because of them, I find myself a little sick with anxiety.

         
What if I make the wrong decision? What if I hate whatever opportunity I do take? What if I regret not seeking another path, or turning down something that could have been great. Is it crazy that I crave adventure, but am terrified of where adventure might lead me? I am 22, and I have this crazy idea that I need to know my whole life plan right this minute. Everyone tries to tell me that no one knows what they are doing at my age. But every time I hear of someone being offered a job, or being accepted into another graduate program, I stop believing that a little bit more. I feel a little more behind in my life, and swallow another strong dose of anxiety. I try to relax and scream at my self “QUE SERA, SERA!” But surprisingly that tactic has proven quite ineffective. I feel lost. I feel confused. I feel alone.

My prayers have become desperate pleas for some divine and irrefutable sign of what to do next. I spend afternoons crying on the phone to my mom, and spend sleepless nights crying out to God to give me some sort of peek into what my future holds. I know, he doesn’t work on my timeline. But that has always been the hardest and most frustrating things for me to learn. Faith wouldn’t be faith if God just handed me all of the answers whenever I demand them, and yet here I am trying that tactic over and over again. Do you know the answer I keep getting to all of my questions?

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and he will make your paths straight.”
Proverbs 3:5-6

Not exactly a step by step guide to post graduation bliss. But still, it stirs my spirit, and assures me, through my anxiety, through my doubt, that this holds answers. This holds peace. I am still working on how, exactly, to trust in the Lord, to not lean on my own understanding. I struggle moment by moment to let Him unclench my fists from that which I hold so tightly. I want immediate answers, and revelations of what’s to come. He encourages me to trust that, though I can’t see it, it will be good. Though I can’t touch it, plan it, or analyze it, I have a hope and a future. Learning to walk by faith is hard, especially at a time where so much of my life is to be determined. Trusting the Lord to slam doors that need to be closed, and lead me step by step is an excruciating process for a control freak trying to reform her ways. Praying for the next right step, and being content to take this season day by day, sometimes moment by moment, is tiring, and frustrating. But it is also freeing. Trusting the Lord to lead me to the next right step in life means I can be fully present, and fully alive in this moment. I can love freely, I can give generously of myself, and receive blessings with thanksgiving. My only job is to live this moment well, and embrace the abundance of life right here, right now, without worry of what the next day will hold.