Meet My Friends: "Extremely Awkward" and "Hard"
If you've been following anything I've written over the last couple years, there was a specific season of my life where one unmistakable truth kept coming up over and over again:
The twenty-somethings stage of life is extremely awkward and hard (and I'm still in the beginning!).
In the midst of extremely awkward, it's easy to let yourself not be content with where you are especially if you don't know what to do with yourself. Take for example what I've been doing since being home: a whole lot of nothing (besides that two weeks I went to Portugal. Casual.). Because I've been doing a whole lot of nothing, it's been difficult for me to see the value in even being home in the first place: I'm not sure what to do, who to spend time with, where to get involved, etc. so I have just opted to do nothing especially if I think I'm only going to be here a short amount of time.
On the other side, in the midst of hard it's easy to let different voices get in your head: voices from people whom you love dearly, voices of lies you allow yourself to believe because you've got yourself convinced it's truth, voices telling you where you should go and what you should do, and even voices telling you that you won't amount to anything and you're going to spend the rest of your life stuck at a dead end somewhere....
The voices of the lies are the voices that suck the most. Those are the voices I've allowed myself to listen to since being out of school, but as of now they're being put to an end. For the last little while I have vowed to myself that I wouldn't return to my old job I had throughout university because I know that I am called to ministry. As important as having a secular job can be as a Christian, waiting tables for the rest of my life doesn't exactly fit the call I have to live life on mission and serve the church in a pastoral capacity. But it seemed like every day since I graduated, everyday I was completely unsure of what my future held, my degree sat on my shelf and mocked me; my declining bank account and upcoming student loan payments mocked me; life just seemed to mock me over and over again.
Hard and awkward seemed to lurk around every corner I tried to take.
A bound and determined spirit was no where to be found.
I was (and still sort of am) at a place of walking in between a chapter of life coming to an end and the potential of a new beginning to start. Hard and awkward still check in every now and again to make sure I'm still doing okay (to be honest I wasn't doing okay...quite frankly leaning more towards my BFF awkward and less toward hard), and of course mock me every time I'm not sure what to do.
Praise the name of the One who takes our hard and awkward moments and embraces them by turning them into great things in weird stages of life. Praise the name of the One who gives clear direction and peace in the midst of tough decision making times. I'm thankful I serve a God who doesn't leave me hanging, even when I want to convince myself that's exactly what he's doing.
And if God didn't know what he was doing, exciting things wouldn't be happening right now! July will be a crazy month of counseling summer camp and fun things like that, BUT I have also accepted an offer to do a 2 year outreach residency at All Shores Wesleyan Church in Spring Lake, Michigan and will be moving out there at the beginning of August. This was not an easy decision to make because of another offer I had on the table, so if you're reading this and you prayed for me thank you SO much for those prayers; you have no clue the impact they had!
Although I have a feeling that "hard" and I will become great friends over the next little while, I'm starting to move away from the awkward "I-don't-know-what-to-do-with-myself" phase little by little. I'm stoked for this new chapter and to be in a new place with new people and to see what kingdom building looks like in West Michigan.
Cue the bound and determined spirit rising up within me!
The twenty-somethings stage of life is extremely awkward and hard (and I'm still in the beginning!).
In the midst of extremely awkward, it's easy to let yourself not be content with where you are especially if you don't know what to do with yourself. Take for example what I've been doing since being home: a whole lot of nothing (besides that two weeks I went to Portugal. Casual.). Because I've been doing a whole lot of nothing, it's been difficult for me to see the value in even being home in the first place: I'm not sure what to do, who to spend time with, where to get involved, etc. so I have just opted to do nothing especially if I think I'm only going to be here a short amount of time.
On the other side, in the midst of hard it's easy to let different voices get in your head: voices from people whom you love dearly, voices of lies you allow yourself to believe because you've got yourself convinced it's truth, voices telling you where you should go and what you should do, and even voices telling you that you won't amount to anything and you're going to spend the rest of your life stuck at a dead end somewhere....
The voices of the lies are the voices that suck the most. Those are the voices I've allowed myself to listen to since being out of school, but as of now they're being put to an end. For the last little while I have vowed to myself that I wouldn't return to my old job I had throughout university because I know that I am called to ministry. As important as having a secular job can be as a Christian, waiting tables for the rest of my life doesn't exactly fit the call I have to live life on mission and serve the church in a pastoral capacity. But it seemed like every day since I graduated, everyday I was completely unsure of what my future held, my degree sat on my shelf and mocked me; my declining bank account and upcoming student loan payments mocked me; life just seemed to mock me over and over again.
Hard and awkward seemed to lurk around every corner I tried to take.
A bound and determined spirit was no where to be found.
I was (and still sort of am) at a place of walking in between a chapter of life coming to an end and the potential of a new beginning to start. Hard and awkward still check in every now and again to make sure I'm still doing okay (to be honest I wasn't doing okay...quite frankly leaning more towards my BFF awkward and less toward hard), and of course mock me every time I'm not sure what to do.
Praise the name of the One who takes our hard and awkward moments and embraces them by turning them into great things in weird stages of life. Praise the name of the One who gives clear direction and peace in the midst of tough decision making times. I'm thankful I serve a God who doesn't leave me hanging, even when I want to convince myself that's exactly what he's doing.
And if God didn't know what he was doing, exciting things wouldn't be happening right now! July will be a crazy month of counseling summer camp and fun things like that, BUT I have also accepted an offer to do a 2 year outreach residency at All Shores Wesleyan Church in Spring Lake, Michigan and will be moving out there at the beginning of August. This was not an easy decision to make because of another offer I had on the table, so if you're reading this and you prayed for me thank you SO much for those prayers; you have no clue the impact they had!
Although I have a feeling that "hard" and I will become great friends over the next little while, I'm starting to move away from the awkward "I-don't-know-what-to-do-with-myself" phase little by little. I'm stoked for this new chapter and to be in a new place with new people and to see what kingdom building looks like in West Michigan.
Cue the bound and determined spirit rising up within me!
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