For those of you who don’t know me well, a great deal of my high school career is marked by the theme “running”. In a lot of cases, that was me eagerly running towards a future, a career, and simply the rest of my life. Unfortunately, it also meant that I spent a lot of time running away. I had sworn up and down that I was going as far away to school as I could possibly bring myself, and I was never coming back. The thought of living in my home town after high school was the worst thing I could picture. I threatened my parents the majority of high school that I was moving away, and there was absolutely nothing they could do to stop me. And a lot of times, I justified this with the simple belief that there was nothing more for me here, there was no further way I could grow into the person I so desperately wanted to be. So by the time my senior year rolled around, I was ready. I knew that being accepted into college on the East Coast was my ticket out of here. This was compounded on the fact that my senior year was the worst year of my life, and I had to do some growing in ways I would not wish on anyone. However, spring came around, and my problems seemed to cease a little bit, my relationship with my family strengthened, and I started to see a little bit of the good that had always been in my home town. Nonetheless, I was still set on leaving. Staying after the year I had was something I didn’t believe I would be capable of doing. Unfortunately, finances were not on my side. To go away to school, I would be about $250,000 in debt by the time I graduated with my degrees. I would love to pretend that after hearing that news, I sobered up, made a rational decision, and decided on my own accord to stay home and do a year at community college. However, that was not the case. I spent months hearing everyone from my mom to my Young Life Leader telling me how dumb I was to leave. I spent months trying to insist to God that school was were I should be. It took some time, but $250,000 finally sunk in. So, I stayed here, something I didn’t even know I had to ability to do. I soon realized how much I needed to stay home when things weren’t hard and heartbreaking. I needed some time to heal here, and that’s exactly what I am doing. My relationships with my parents became so much better. I got to spend time with my sisters, who have become shockingly cool since I checked out during high school. I have seen the redemption of my life here. The fact of the matter is, and this is something that I didn’t really realize recently, but the source of the problem was never external. So much of my displeasure with my life came straight from my anxieties and insecurities thatI took out on everyone around me. This would have made leaving impossible, because no matter where I went, I would have always been followed by the mentality that impacted so much of my life. In realizing that, things changed for me. Slowly, and I mean very slowly, I started to repair damages that those insecurities had on my life.
Next year I am going to Thailand, India, and Guatemala, and I spent a lot of time wondering if this was once again the same thing as before. If I was once again running away from my life here. But I think something is profoundly different about this than before. I have known for a long time that I have been called to live abroad, better learn the communities, and do what I can to bring aid. So what has become so clear about this is that I am not running away anymore. I am chasing after a plan laid upon my life. We are all called to a life of moving forward, being better, helping others, but this has taught me one simple thing. There is something significant about being still until called, then chasing after with everything you have in you.
