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I just read an article on MSN about a man who went through a
painful divorce, and is now selling everything in his life on ebay. He said he’s going to walk out of his house
with only his wallet and passport, go to the airport, ask where the next available
flight is headed, and see where life takes him from there. As soon as I finished reading, I thought to
myself, “Holy crap, I could never do that!”
I’ve noticed that stability and planning for the future are
huge issues for me. Every time I get
directions from mapquest, and someone is reading them to me, I need to know two
or three steps ahead of my next turn, just so that I feel comforted that I know
where exactly I’m going. Ray can attest
to this (“I know that one, but what’s the NEXT step?”). I feel nervous and uneasy about things unless
I know exactly what the outcome is going to be.
I used to have my entire life planned out. I would get married as soon as I finished
college, before I was 21. My first two
kids would be two years apart, and the second and third would be four years
apart, all of which I would have before I turned 31. I would live around the same area my entire
life, with all of my family and friends close by. I’ve only just recently realized, in the past
couple years, that I can’t plan my future and expect it all to turn out exactly how I want.
The whole marriage-before-I-turn-21 thing obviously isn’t
going to work out, because I’m turning 21 and graduating in a couple of months,
and I don’t think I’m quite ready to take that next big step. I’ve realized I don’t want kids right
away. I’m so young; I feel like I need
to live my life a little bit before I can bring another person into this world
and spend all my energy taking care of it.
I don’t know where my job or my husband’s job is going to take us; we
could be living halfway across the world in the next few years; who knows? I’ve been going through a lot of indecision in
the past couple years, just trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my
life. I got so stressed out because I
had everything planned out exactly, and none of it was working out. I had always wanted to major in English and
be a writer since I was little. I used
to write stories on the computer every day after school. As soon as I started taking English classes
in college I realized I hated it, and I didn’t want to do it for the rest of my
life. I switched to psychology, and,
although I love love LOVE learning all the ins and outs of the human brain, I
don’t want to do it for a living. I’ve
just now found what I love to do, and can see myself doing as a profession, but
with my approaching graduation, I’m getting really scared (What if I don’t find
a job? What if I’m not good at it? What if I hate it?).
A couple weeks ago, I was playing through a book of Selah
songs. They have really nice arrangements
of a bunch of old hymns. As I sat there,
playing piano and singing to ‘What A Friend We Have In Jesus’ I came across the
lines “O what peace we often forfeit, O what needless pain we bear, all because
we do not carry everything to God in prayer.’
And it hit me. And I felt
incredibly stupid. All this time of
stressing out and worrying, and I could have just lifted up all of my burdens
to God. I start freaking out over the
tiniest thing. A little bit of stress,
and I get so nervous and worried. Every
time I pray, I thank God for everything He’s given me and done for me, and I
pray for the people I care about. It
never really occured to me to pray about my doubts and uncertainties of the
future. If only I would’ve realized that
sooner, I would’ve saved myself a lot of stress. I’m still having trouble with worrying about
everything, from the tiniest things that go wrong, to my plans for the future,
but I’m trying to work on it. Whenever I
start feeling burdened by all my crazy thoughts, I say a little prayer and take
a deep breath. I know that when I pray
for comfort in all my times of doubt and stress, He gives me peace. And I'm so thankful for that.
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