It has been almost 5 months since my last post on this blog. The thought of not really giving you any update is quite inconsiderate on my part and not really expressing the gratitude I have for all of your love and support. To be quite honest, I didn't foresee a reason to continue posting regularly and you are probably wondering why I am posting again. Truth be told, I have long had certain parameters set for my life and the direction I hoped it would be going (especially post World Race). The thing is, I have a habit of staring and glaring into the future rather than seeing what is well lit right in front of my toes. In true Biblically promised fashion, Jesus always has some other interesting thing tied up in his sandals for me and I don't often like to accept what He might have to unravel. To say that He has thrown me a curve ball to the plans I have stored in my temporal lobe is probably a cough of an understatement. To try and explain a little bit better, I will do my best to catch you all up to speed as to what exactly is has been happening with me the in last few months.
When I was out on the field as a squad leader, Jesus seemed to be making certain things very clear about where He wanted me to go once I got home. I was assuming that I was going to be temporarily done seeing the world, done with crazy community and ready to become 'an adult'. If you can all remember my California dreams posts, (that are about 25 years in the making now) you know that my heart is waiting to get to the West Coast one day. The amount of prophecies about California and words of confirmation spoken into me was quite numerous during my 4 months out, and I assumed that meant it was time for me to quickly set my feet down in North Carolina upon my return and time for me to rapidly roll my Volkswagen across the country. The other half of my dream, however, was something that I had pushed away since I got out of high school. Through the assemblage of various puzzle pieces and a lot of movements from Holy Spirit, Jesus began to nurture the desire in me to head to nursing school.
Becoming a nurse was something that tickled my cerebellum since I was young but I had never really taken it seriously until I started to take a good look at myself with Christ. If I could properly explain how desperately I now want to be Nurse Angel, I don't know if there would be enough room for me to write about it here. The problem I have had with making my dreams come true is that I have not had to deal with excessive logistical details and responsibilities for the past few years. I have tried to push specifics away for longer than I can remember and it has not gotten my feet very far. My concept of responsibility (for the majority of my life) was that all of the administrative things would just somehow work themselves out and that everything would effortlessly fall into place. This thought pattern created a very lackadaisical, immature and idealistic viewpoint that really held me back from living the full life we were all made for. The thing about having the character of Christ, however, is that He does not instill a 'brush it under the table' mentality… and I tried to head into my future with quite a few cracks in the foundation of who I signed up to be.
My main priority in beginning the process of making things happen was purely a dream with a few hints of decisions that I did not really want to take the time to make. Once I started on the research train, I accumulated minimal quantities of needed data and large amounts of mildly unimportant information that could have filled any cat or cat lady's curiosity about nothing to do with nursing school. My hunt for the right people, the right apartment, the right church and the best city was underway and I was pumped up about what I thought I needed. Jesus' call to character (which was more or less denied and riding the line of unbeknownst) superseded the swirl of verbal processing and boasting about tomorrow (see James 4:13-17) that I was spatting all over the place. My ignorance was not well sifted and I was swagging so hard in it. I was much more interested in what I thought I wanted and Jesus was not really invited into what plans I thought I was making. The hard to hear, hard to swallow truth was whispering louder and louder and I was figuring out any which way to tiptoe around it. I knew that something different was going to happen and it was coming whether I liked it or not.
