It’s time to grow up….and keep on growing
Changes, transitions, new experiences…they are all a normal part of life. Some are more exciting than others and many present an exciting new chapter in life. All, though, present some sort of challenge and require our trust that God has a plan in it somewhere. I will just be honest from the beginning – I’m terrible at trusting God through transitions. To illustrate, I recently graduated with my Master’s in Public Health. The past two years have been incredible – I was privileged enough to go to school to study and now work in an area I deeply care about. And while I am thrilled to death about this, my feelings of elation are strongly overshadowed by feelings of doubt, uncertainty, and pure fear about what the future holds. When I graduated, everyone asked, “What an exciting time for you! Doesn’t it feel great? What are you going to do? What are your career goals?” which is the only polite thing, of course, to ask a person who just worked crazy hard for a degree… except that the only thing it instilled in me was more anxiety. All I could think was, “well, yes I’m excited, but also completely frustrated. I feel like I should know what to do; I definitely felt God leading me in this direction when I decided to go back to school, but now that I’m finished, I feel a little (oh wait, totally) lost.” This only lead to further feelings of frustration toward God, wondering why He, at least from my perspective, was choosing to stay silent on this very important issue in my life (oh yes, I am fully aware of (a) how self-centered that is, and (b) that I am not the only person going through a major transition/life event. But I’m just being honest).
So yeah, not doing so great on that front, but enough about my issues. Let’s get down to answering the essential question: Why must we go through transitions and how do we trust God through them? I may not being doing so well trusting God at times, but I have thought about this question a lot. In listening to Summer’s sermon on Amos this past week, I saw the beginning of an answer brought into clear focus. Amos illustrated for us what happens when we put our trust in something other than God – it only destroys us in the end. Believing that my security rests in me getting my perfect job, or having my next 10 years perfectly planned out isn’t what God calls us to do. What I’ve realized is transitions are God’s way of saying, “Hey you, you’ve forgotten who ultimately is in control here. It’s not you and until you truly let go and allow yourself to see that, this is going to get harder and harder.”
Living in constant anxiety about the future is no way to operate day-to-day and it is definitely not in line with God’s words to us in Matthew 6:25-34: (v. 27) “Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?” So bit by bit I am learning to take a step back. I first have to admit that in the scheme of all of life and all the many things that happen, my transition from graduation to a job is not that huge. I’m not minimizing it by any means, but this learning and shaping experience is just one of many to go along with all the other learning, shaping, and sometimes excruciating experiences that are a part of God molding us more and more into who he wants us to be. That may sound a little cliché, but it is very true. Life will never stop having transitions, whether it is moving, changing jobs, getting married, having a baby, finishing school, retiring…well, that list goes on forever. In reality, all of life is one big transition moving us closer and closer to whom God originally intended for us to be.
I was recently talking to a friend about my anxieties, expressing a feeling of being overwhelmed at the prospect of having to make all the “right connections” in the job world. She responded by saying, “But Paula, you know the Creator, of everything. Isn’t that enough? Isn’t that the ultimate connection?” The obvious answer is a resounding YES, as hard as it is to internalize at times. We know a powerful, loving, and steadfast God who is in control of this entire universe. We also know a God who works in His time, a time that is perfect according to His plan, no matter how it may feel in the moment.
I often find myself waking up in the morning, singing this song:
“Father, I will not worry about tomorrow
All of its questions, or all of its answers.
Father, I will just trust you…….”
I think I may continue to repeat these words, and to read Jeremiah 29:11, over and over, because I am not perfect and I need continual reminders. But in the end, I will rest in the assurance that I serve a mighty God who knows and tends to every finicky detail of what is my crazy life. I will leave you with these words of Colossians 1:9-12 from The Message, which illustrates perfectly what is in store for us as we trust God through it all:
“Be assured that from the first day we heard of you, we haven’t stopped praying for you, asking God to give you wise minds and spirits attuned to his will, and so acquire a thorough understanding of the ways in which God works. We pray that you’ll live well for the Master, making him proud of you as you work hard in his orchard. As you learn more and more how God works, you will learn how to do your work. We pray that you’ll have the strength to stick it out over the long haul – not the grim strength of gritting your teeth, but the glory-strength God gives. It is strength that endures the unendurable and spills over into joy, thanking the Father who makes us strong enough to take part In everything bright and beautiful that he has for us.”