The Great Unknown
Last Friday, E graduated with his Masters.
L, who’s been watching a lot of Frozen, spent the whole week calling it his “cornoration.”
I still can’t quite believe it. It honestly feels like we just started out on this crazy journey toward a new career for him. Didn’t we just move? Didn’t he just go to his first class? What happened? How did we get here so fast?
I remember telling him, as a way of encouraging both of us, that it would all be over in a flash. Looking back, I have to admit my words were kind of cheerleader-y (meaning I didn’t fully believe what I was saying at the time), but they ended up being more truthful that I could have known.
It’s been a hard season, living on my Midwest-based salary in one of the most expensive metropolitan areas of the country. We’ve been stretched, forced to lean solely on God when the bank account got really skinny. And God has been oh-so-faithful. There have been surprise scholarships and work bonuses and raises, and no one in this crowded little apartment has gone without. For me, this was ongoing confirmation that E is on the right path.
Now that the school part is over, he’s on to job searching, and we’ve taken that first step into the Great Unknown. Where will E work? Where will we live? Will we be able to find the right preschool for L? These are all unanswered questions, questions that would – understandably – keep some people awake at night.
Strangely, I seem to be comfortable with the unknown. But then, I’ve had practice. Back in 2008, I quit a ten-year career in education with no job in sight simply because I felt like God was telling me it was time, and that he had a plan. He delivered in that season, too – I had free housing and part-time work to pay my expenses, and when the right job opened up in the middle of the following school year, I was free to take it.
Sometimes, God seems so perfectly magical that it overwhelms. The way he knows our hearts, our dreams, our passions even better than we do. The way he lays things out for us. We can’t miss it if we’re looking. Granted, sometimes he sends us walking into the fog rather than down a clearly lit path, but he will still point us into that fog.
All we have to do is trust him and walk forward.
I’m trusting him for so many *big* things right now, the list almost seems unfair. A job for E. A preschool for L. An agent and a publisher. A new church family. Local friends. A place to live with more space inside and out.
These are things that seem out of reach right now. Things I just can’t conjure up. But our God? Our amazing, loving, perfect Father in Heaven? He can do it all. And if something doesn’t work out the way I want it to, I have enough faith to keep walking forward anyway, because he’s proven to me over and over that his plans are better than mine.
What are you trusting God for in your life right now?
