Faithful in the Journey

              Hey y’all! How are you doing? I know it’s been a bit, but then again, I’m sure you are used to that by now. As an introduction to what’s been on my mind lately, I think I need to give you a brief update on my life. I basically graduated college a few months ago (got one more class to finish up, then come September I am officially done with undergrad!), and am currently on my way across country with my father to move me out there, so I can go live with my aunt for a year. Both of these things are exciting, but especially important backstory for this post because 1.) I started writing this to submit as a speech for my Baccalaureate, the theme of which was Faithful in the Journey, so keep in mind this is going to start off like a speech would, and 2.) it explains why in the world I’m moving across the country when I love the east coast. ‘Ight… Here goes nothing…

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My favorite movie of all time is Men in Black. If you haven’t seen it, you definitely need to finish reading this post (😊), and then go watch it. If you have not seen the movies, they are about this agency (the Men in Black) who work with aliens who have come to planet Earth to help them live "normal" lives, and keep the humans from finding out about it. Towards the start of the first movie, one of the main characters (Tommy Lee Jones, or K) is trying to open up the other main character (Will Smith, or J) to considering the possibility that aliens might exist. The line he says to accomplish this is “ Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you'll know tomorrow”.

To be honest, this line has always haunted me. I didn't like the idea that maybe the things I knew were not actually true, and it was likely even a lot of what I "knew" was going to be proven wrong soon. Realizing I didn't really "know" all that much started in college, when I  found myself facing seemingly endless hits to what I thought I knew. At the end of my freshman year this applied to what I thought I knew academically/logically, theologically, ect., which shook me. But by the end of my freshman year the attacks (or at least what felt like attacks) had moved onto what I thought I knew about what I was going to be doing with my life, and in what order. This was even harder than the logical hits (which I'll explain how I dealt with in a later post), because you see, little ol' me always had a plan, and that plan was what kept me going. I might not  have known exactly what was going to happen along the way, but I knew each mile-stone that I would be hitting, and when I would be hitting it. For example, when I started college I “knew” that I was going to be graduating in eight semesters, with a degree in Youth Ministry, after which I would go straight to Gordon Conwell to get my graduate degree, most likely in Youth Ministry as well, but maybe in religion. Oh yeah, and I wouldn’t be engaged, but I would be on my way there.

And yet, here I am four years later, almost done with my degree in Theology, after being forced to take a semester off for health reasons, moving to California (of all places… I hate the heat), for a gap year to figure out what exactly I want and where I want to go to school, and romantically very single (not that I’m exactly bothered by that, but I’m certainly in a different place then I thought I would be). None of this was in the plan, and if you had asked me even a year and a half ago if this is where I would be now, I would have emitted a single laugh and said very condescendingly “yeah, okay” (I’m working on it). I had a plan. I was going to stick with that plan. And it is important to note that when I made this plan, I was convinced it was God's too (I mean why wouldn't God want me to go to seminary?). 
Now, there have been two times in my life where I looked forward and saw only blackness. I don't mean that in a dark way, I simply just mean I couldn't see anything (I'm speaking literally here). I had no idea what was to come next. One of them was when I was forced to take a semester off from school, which was so never in the plan. The other was when I found out I wouldn't be going to grad school this coming year. I was lost and disappointed, and had no plan to follow, and no idea where to turn. I think my first reaction was actually to pray that the world would just stop for a few days, just so I could figure everything out. When that didn’t work I asked God over and over again to give me an extremely clear sign of which path I should be taking". 
When neither of those things worked, God helped me to look for the next tiny step, instead of the whole path, and take it. And in this case, the next step was moving to California for a year to be with my family. I know what you're thinking, that's really not a tiny step, but in the grand scheme of things, it really is. So many people have asked me what I'm going to be doing when I'm out here, and much to my pain, the answer has always been "I'm not totally sure yet", not because I have not been trying to figure it out. Moving to Cali made no sense to me at all; everything I know is on the east coast, my immediate family is not exactly thrilled about it, and I had no plan beyond that. But for some reason, even though I'm on a different coast, with no job, and people who I love and share blood with, but do not really know yet, and not a ton of money, I'm confident this is where I'm supposed to be. When I was falling apart, because my plan did, totally lost and confused, the door opened up for me to come here, I felt a call, and even though for the first time in my life I had no plan, I had peace in coming here. And I know that peace could not have come from me.
Through it all, there is only one thing I will always know, today, tomorrow, and every day to come: God is here, and God cares. I want to follow God where ever God leads me, because in the end, God is the only thing I know with complete and utter confidence to be true. So I will follow God where God calls me, even when God asks me to do something I think is totally crazy. And I am out here, with no plan, not freaking out, solely because I know wherever I find myself, God is going to be there, and God will always have my back. When everything I think I know falls apart around me, God is the one thing I can lean on.

It is not easy, and I still struggle with it, but something a friend told me recently has really helped. He told me  he started believing in God’s plan when he started living his life, instead of thinking about it all the time, and that in order to live without a plan is by taking each step at a time, knowing you're already living one out. I know God will always be faithful in my journey, and the best life I know to live is one that is faithful to Him along the way. I don't know what I'm going to know tomorrow, and I don't want to live by what I think is true. I want to live following the one thing I know to be true. And even though it's confusing, it's not scary anymore, because I know there is not a single step I will take that God is not holding my hand.