I've started to write this post a few times and honestly wasn't sure how to finish it so I erased it and gave up only to try to write it over and over again. I'm determined that I will finish it today, because I'm sure that there is someone else out there in my shoes and someone else out there who needs to know they're not the only one going through this!
As a recent college graduate I'm getting very used to hearing the question "So what's next?" or "What are you doing now?" Sometimes when I hear that I want to curl up in a ball and become invisible. I'd like to shrivel up and hope no one notices me. It's like those last few weeks of high school all over again when the only things people seemed to care about were where you were going to college and what you were going to major in. At the time that seemed like the biggest decision of my life. I just knew that if I picked the wrong school or the wrong major I was going to ruin my life forever and miss something majorly important. I definitely lost sleep and my appetite over it and now I wonder why. Because to be honest, I know me and I know that I would have made great friends and had great success in college not matter where I had gone and what I had studied because I was determined to do so! Thankfully, I did choose the school that I did, because I met my best friends there and I got a degree that I loved. But I know that it was not an "end of the world" decision that I was making when I chose those things.
Here I am again though. I'm back at that place of "What comes next?" Trying to figure out where I'm "supposed" to be and what I'm "supposed" to do. And again, it seems like the end of the world. It seems like life is a ticking time bomb and if I don't hurry and "figure my life out" I'm going to miss every amazing opportunity I ever dreamed of! And I have dreamed of a lot....
For anyone who knows me well, I am a dreamer at heart. From the moment I watched Peter Pan and believed with my whole heart that Neverland was a real place to the first time I heard the story of The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe and tried countless times to find Narnia through the wardrobe in my bedroom, I've always had that bigger than the here and now, shoot for the stars imagination! I love the crazy big, over the top ideas and dreams! Throughout my life I've had plans to open my own flower shop, work with the whales at Sea World, live on the mission field in Mexico, run my own summer camp, be an Occupational Therapist, go to med school, write a book, become a singer, open a cupcake bakery, be a massage therapist, work for a huge PR firm, and most recently to start my own photography business. Clearly, most of these things are completely unrelated to each other, but each one of them comes from a love for something specific deep inside of me.
My frustration with myself always comes from the fact that I feel like I genuinely love entirely too many things. If someone were to ask me to sum myself up briefly I would say "I am a gardening animal lover with a deep love for living life simply with children of all ethnicities in the sweaty heat of summer, hoping to one day work in the medical world while writing, singing, baking, and giving massages to a serious PR guru, all the while photographing all these shenanigans". Because that makes so much sense, right? How the heck can I deeply and genuinely love and pursue all of these things in one short lifetime?! That's the thing I always forget though....I have a lifetime.
Now granted, we don't know how long we have on this earth. Thankfully, God already has my days numbered and He knows. He's got it all figured out while my tiny brain is over here still trying to separate the sunflowers and the dolphins. But I do know that this is my one life that I've been given and I want to live it to the very fullest! I want to give it everything I've got and never look back with regrets.
I'm learning that it's okay to not know. It's okay to not have it all figured out. Who knows! Maybe I'll accomplish all those dreams (minus the whole marine biologist and med school thing) in my lifetime. But for now, it's okay to just pick one and pursue it for a little while. If it works out: great! If it doesn't: that's okay too. It's okay to not have a plan all the time. It's okay to just stop and take life in. Most people don't hop right out of college and into their dream job with everything they ever wanted in life. But right here and right now is where God has me and He has me here for a reason. And with His guidance I will find where I'm "supposed" to be when I'm "supposed" to be there.
To everything there is a season, and a time for every matter or purpose under heaven. – Ecclesiastes 3:1
