Please pray.

Nothing sudden or really even out of the ordinary, but I could really use some prayer.

I've struggled pretty much every day of my life with the answer to a simple question. "What do you want to be when you grow up?" I remember as a child starting a list to answer that question. Every time I decided on a new life profession I would jot down. After two months and 30+ professions, I gave up. It didn't seem to serve a purpose if every profession I could think of went onto the list.

I changed my major so many times in college that I stopped telling the school -- it was easier to wait until they needed the information than to update them every 2 weeks. I graduated with a degree in some meaningless field knowing I didn't want to pursue it. Thinking and planning on moving out of state for a ministry internship was definitely God at work, and I thought I'd finally discovered what he had for me. I moved home so I could organize and pack before following the Lord to the great unknown. Until He stopped me.

Now looking back I feel like I've wasted the last year of my life. I dated a guy who decided his plan was better than God's when it came to ministry and life. I loved on students and then was told I was no longer welcome to be anywhere near them. My first job is and always will be shallow, meaningless work. I faced my biggest challenge in months convincing Mexicans to cook rice pasta for a customer with Celiac's. My second job is essentially a dead-end with no hope of advancing without significant self-funded training and causes me to lack compassion. It's hard to care that someone needs ranch dressing or didn't get a prescription for Adderall when last week I was talking with a friend about a six-year-old girl with a brain tumor, and when that brain tumor was removed she became completely paralyzed from the neck down.

Here's where the prayer part comes in.

I'm tired of wasting God's time and mine. This leaves a few different options.
1. He can reveal to me that He's not wasting either of our time and show me a little bit of what He's up to right now.
2. I pursue the most rediculous mission trip I've ever dreamed of. One year and 11 countries.
3. I pursue school. But not just any school. I've been told that what I'm considering will mean I'm sacrificing my entire life for my career. I think the Lord may be leading me towards this, but it's a "smart person" profession that especially as a woman, may cause people to be more than a little intimidated by me. (You know, because that doesn't happen already...)
4. I pour myself into launching a business. I've been working on it a bit lately and would completely love doing it, but I'm not sure the challenge would satisfy me.

I'm waiting one day at a time for the Lord to show me His will, and in all honesty, I'm tired of waiting. I need to make decisions rather quickly and this isn't exactly a simple chain of events to decide upon.

Pray that our Savior would lead me to become the woman He desires for me to be, whatever path that means I must follow.

Story of My Life

Vacation

va⋅ca⋅tion /veɪˈkeɪʃən, və-/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [vey-key-shuhn, vuh-] –noun

1. a respite or a time of respite from something : intermission
2 a scheduled period during which activity (as of a court or school) is suspended
3: a period spent away from home or business in travel or recreation

I love vacations. Really, I just love short changes in pace. I like knowing I can go home or go back to a sense of normalcy, but that for the time being I can mix things up a little. This past weekend was exactly that. When my camera is fixed I'll bring it along on things like this but until then you get the thousand words one is worth.

A friend and I went up to a cabin on the lake everyone in Danville visits and stays. She has a family cabin there, so we rushed out of town on Friday and returned home Sunday evening. Wonderful. From the moment we got into the car we started talking. Much like typical women do, we continued this pattern for the entirety of the weekend. We talked until 3:30am on Saturday night without realizing it. By Sunday I wasn't sure I'd be able to talk again, and I actually spent most of Monday without talking to make up for the weekend. The conversation was all over the board but focused on a few specific topics, specifically relationships, growing up and family, three rather touchy points for me.

A few bottles of wine and many soggy tissues later, life seems a little simpler. Saturday morning as I was sitting at the bar eating pancakes, the Lord put a few of the puzzle pieces together. I had an aha! moment unlike many others and was at peace again for the first time in almost 2 months. I realized that I was accepting responsibility for what wasn't my fault and I realized what I needed to be accepting the responsibility for. I so often am so afraid that people will let me down that I'm afraid to do anything to make them mad. Granted, I'm a bit of a joker and I do like to push buttons, but in my heart I'm desperately afraid that if I say the wrong combination of words everyone in my life will walk off. It seems to have worked more than once before. The relationships I know could end are the ones I'm most afraid of, and the ones in which I'm most afraid to be honest and be myself. I figure if people know who I truly am, they'll dislike me for who I am rather than who I've made myself out to be. More than a little ironic, all things considered. I realized over breakfast that I'd been afraid to confront pride because I didn't trust God's provision in my life. Scary.

Vacations are a blessing in so many ways. They allow us to remove ourselves from the daily hustle and bustle that distracts us from our Savior. They let us slow down for a minute and do what really matters. They make it ok to sit on the couch all day long and only leave it to fetch food from the kitchen. They give us time set aside to converse with the ones we love. They let us see a different part of the Lord's creation and His work in our lives. And sometimes we come back from them truly knowing what God is up to in this crazy adventure of following Him.