I’ve spent the last year reflecting a lot on what I want to do with my future. I have looked back at visions God gave me in college and dreamed about what I could do if there was no limitations in my life. Thinking about how I could live my life for God alone. If I’m honest, this is not exactly where I thought I would be.
I have felt like God has had me waiting on him and his steps for most of my post-college life. It’s been 4 years of waiting for answers to be given and steps to open up. Nothing, thus far, looks like what I thought it would when I was dreaming about the life I would have as a college senior. I could not have predicted the string of random jobs I’ve had or the ability to travel the world for 11 months. I would have definitely not picked to wait on God so much. I saw my life as something that would get started, take off, and not stop as soon as I graduated college.
But here we are, it’s been 4 years, I’m unemployed, living at my parents’ house, and without friends that live close to me. Not exactly the life I imagined, in fact, this is the life that kept me up at night with worry and fear. But, now I’m in the middle of it, it is my reality. And so I keep asking God about my future, knowing that he has more for me.
On the Race, the idea of CGA came up, and with it a lot of questions, doubts, and fears. My list of reasons why not was simple in my eyes: I have a college degree in youth ministry, the funds would not come in again, and I would have to spend more time in waiting before the semester would start. And as real as the first two reasons are, my biggest reason for not wanting to do it was the fact that I would have several months of wait between the ending of the Race and beginning of CGA. I was done waiting. I wanted my life to get started. I wanted to do everything in my own timing, which was quickly, because I didn’t want to wait.
As always, God had way better plans than I did. In the midst of three different meetings with people on my leadership team, God squashed every reason I had to not go to CGA. With my Squad Mentor’s encouragement, I saw CGA as a very real step to the future that I had been picturing. The one that I saw for myself back in college. And I accepted that God was asking me to wait, again.
As I look forward to where God will have me in just over a month, I realize there was a lot that he had to do in me before I was ready for CGA. I had to learn how to wait again, I had to relearn the truths and beauty that come when you allow God to do his will in his timing. I also know that I don’t know what my future holds. I don’t know where God will have me next, but I hold out hope that he has a future for me that glorifies him more tomorrow than it does today.
So here I am, 26.5 yrs old, Bible college graduate, unemployed, ready to take on what God has for me next. I never thought I would be going to a discipleship school, or spend even more time learning about leadership, I spent 4 years and $40,000 learning those things in my early twenties. But I’ve realized that God has more for me. If I’ve learned anything at this point about how my life will go, it’s that I have no idea how it will go. I don’t know what God has for me after CGA, but I do know that he has this for me now.
