Finding Your Way

For one year now I have been back in college full time.  This time the end of the tunnel is in sight, albeit a little farther in the distance than I had been hoping.  Yet it is still there.  After one year back in school and with one more to go I have had some time to reflect on a thought that has been in my mind for a long time now.  Finding my way in life.  For my parent's generation and even that of my older siblings, life looked more direct.  I have often become frustrated in my life because my path has more than taken a circuitous route....it's like trying to follow the track of a squirrel hopped up on caffeine!  (For a mental image think of "Over the Hedge!).  I know this has caused concern to people in my life, and yet, it has made me realize one thing.  My path through life wasn't meant to be strait.

I learned a long time ago if I didn't just accept life changes and see them as a new challenge I was going to go insane.  From the moment I decided this, while my life continued on in a seemingly haphazard direction, it started to make some kind of sense to me.  Making sense out of the chaos; I was becoming better and better at that.  Because of this seeming lack of direction, my life has been enriched and challenged in ways I never thought possible.

One year I thought I had switched from a steady but ultimately unfullfilling job to the exciting world of wedding planning.  One week later my boss discovered I was better at her job than she was.  This did not go over well..  So I found myself out of a job and cut adrift!  This was probably the most terrifying time in my life.  I thought for sure I was finally directionless.  But from this directionless I managed to learn the ins and outs of dealing with unemployment, a skill that helped me and other people in my life at later dates.  I also got a chance to spend a summer with my sister and niece, a summer I would not trade for all the money in the world!  While nothing earth shattering happened, I was able to come to know my oldest sister better, as an adult, and that is priceless to me.  From that summer I went back to college, choosing my first college, Christendom. 

To an outside observer this year seems to ultimately be a failure.  I couldn't continue on after that year there and never returned to finish at that college.  But if I hadn't gone back, and had to deal with a very frustrating first semester, I wouldn't have the most amazing second semester.  I was introduced to the world of film and found talents I didn't know I had.  I have my name (in several places) on a feature length film and discovered a love for production on top of my love for writing.  Combine these two loves together and whole worlds can be created!

And so the story continues.  A couple years in corporate America, a year of unemployment (which I knew how to handle without a problem now!) and then a wonderfully frightening and unbelievably enriching year of teaching.  That year of teaching junior high was another large step in my life.  I moved to a state where I knew no one and made a home for myself.  I discovered I am a good teacher and once more was back in the world of theatre, a world I have loved for many years.  I learned the amazing feeling of being able to help a child learn something.  The deeply moving moment of receiving thanks from a parent in being able to help their child bring out their hidden talents. To have a student come up to me with a fist full of my favorite flowers with a hopeful look on his face that I would like them followed by a beautiful smile when I buried my nose in them and immediately put them in front of me on my desk!.  To have a student run up to me and give me a hug for no reason other than they liked seeing me at their volleyball game!  I was heart broken when I couldn't continue on in that job.  But as I stood in the school chapel talking to my principle about it, I looked and saw the crucifix on the wall and in my minds eye I could almost hear God say to me, "Time to move on."  And so it was.  I knew then that God really did have a path for my life.  It was His path.

God doesn't always work in a strait line.  In fact, if we really think about it, His lines are graceful curves and arches all over the canvas of our lives.  When we truly try to find our way in life, when we surrender that control to God, He takes over and takes off.  Some people have gentle, slowly changing curves in their lives and some people have sharp and sudden turns to the right and left.  Or maybe a sweeping curve high and out to left field.  Regardless the direction taken, we have to remember that we are all on our own, individual paths in life, following the directions given, even when they don't really seem to make sense to us.  They make sense to God and all we have to do is remember, especially through the difficult and confusing times when it seems there is no rhyme or reason in our lives, there is an amazing picture being painted and we are on the tip of the brush of the Artist as we find our way in life.