The universe (and God) love to work in the most annoyingly ironic ways; today’s dose of irony began with my certainty and concluded in my complete messiness.
I’ve been so sure, ever since middle school, of where I’m going to go to college, the things I’m going to study, and what I want to do with my life. I’ve trusted in Jesus and in His plan, and I’ve seen His provision in placing me where I need to be for school and for life. Yet somehow, in the midst of it all, I think I might have missed something a little bigger. I think I may have neglected the things I love and crave for the things I thought I needed, and what I thought God had for me. So for some reason, today, 12 days before I move in to my dorm and start my college career, I realized, I don’t know what God’s plan is – I know what my plan is.
I’m at a point, all of a sudden, where I feel like whichever way I turn I’m going to jump and not be able to see where I’ll land; I feel like this leap of faith, either one way or the other, will leave me in free fall. I hate the idea of uncertainty, the unknown. And yet all of a sudden I’m facing a crossroads where both paths seem equally dangerous and neither feels right.
So in the midst of this, as I’m grasping for a constant amidst the turmoil, I pulled back and asked myself, “What, when all is said and done, no matter what I choose to pursue or where I decide to go or what lies in my future, is my ultimate goal?” And the conclusion I came to is this: when everything else is stripped away, I need, if nothing else, to know Him, to know God, and to know that He knows me. That’s my ultimatum. My final calling, my sincerest, most desperate desire, is to know my Creator intimately. and if this college, or that job, or those people aren’t going to help me know Him more deeply, then those things aren’t where I should be and what I should be pursuing.
However, that is so much easier said than done. I still don’t know where I should go in order to know God, but I do know that he will order my steps. I guess right now I need to start where I am: find God right now. And maybe, as I find Him here, I’ll find where he wants me to go.
So my prayer is this: that my eyes be opened to Jesus. That I can learn to know him as my provider, as my source of wisdom. To see him in every moment, even these hellish ones, where I feel very much lost and upside down.
And in the end I know this, that my God’s promises don’t return void, and that in His right hand I will not be shaken.
so here’s to uncertainty and messiness and resting in the midst of turmoil.
be gentle, be patient.
• allison nicole •
alltheblindingstars 