Its that time on the race, heading into final debrief, where every person on my squad has either written a " what's next" blog, thought about what they are going to write on their "what's next" blog, or decided that they are so tired of blogging that they don't want to write one, but know they should.
I debated whether or not I wanted to write this, mostly because I don't have a definite 10 step, 5 year plan to what my life is going to look like for when I get home. I can't tell you exactly where I will be and exactly what I will be doing, and all of my life I have liked to "have it all together" for myself and especially to the public eye. I have some direction from the Lord and tentative plans, I even know what I want to do… I just don't know what its going to look like.
The other day I read a blog from my favorite ex-racer, Stephanie May in her Lipstick Gospel, one sentence really stuck out to me: " I want to live that kind of life. I want to be living proof that God caught me every single time I found the courage to jump."
Over the past year my Father has been trying to teach me this lesson SOOO many times: that when I find the courage to step out in faith, the courage to trust Him fully, the courage to depend on Him completely, and the courage to give up the reigns of my life: He isn't going to let me fall, not now and not ever. Sometimes this lesson has come subtly like a gentle whisper and other times by hitting me right over the head. Its the slow learning and constant reminder of this lesson that brings us here and to my "what's next blog", drum roll please…
This fall I will be living at my families house in Austin with my beautiful Momma, awesome step dad, and my two wonderful youngest brothers. They are five years apart, but apparently are both going through puberty, who's excited about hormones?? I haven't really lived at home since high school, which was 5 years, a million miles, and a changed heart ago. God told me that it is going to be a hard season for me, but He also told me that it is exactly where He wants me: and that's good enough for me. I don't know what I am going to be doing. I plan on shadowing some nurses and getting a job but I don't have any prospects for that, and I'm learning its okay.
I am planning on moving to Grand Rapids, Michigan in January to start the next chapter. I hope to attend accelerated nursing school at GVSU beginning in May, and I won't know whether I have been accepted or not until mid February, but I know I am supposed to move in January. Which means that when I move there it will be in complete faith and trust, trust that my God is faithful and faith that if He put nursing school so strongly on my heart, He will get me there. I have no idea where I am going to live, what I am going to do for a living when I get there, or how the heck a Texas girl is supposed to survive a Michigan winter. I don't have any freaking clue what it is going to look like, but thankfully He does.
When I don't have everything all figured out and slotted into my "perfect plan" is when I learn to trust my Heavenly Daddy more and when He can be better glorified through my life. Better glorified because I am no longer trying to fit my tiny, little, miniscule, flawed plan into the perfect one that He promised for every believer who has chosen to lay down their own life daily, for the sake of their Savior. Not because we are capable but because we have each come to the foot of the cross absolutely broken, bruised and empty and walked away filled, in complete awe of the grace, mercy, and love that covers us completely.
