Upon
coming home from the world race, my mind was racing with ideas about
what the next step for my future would hold.
From
July to October of the race, I had spent my free time looking up
different seminaries in which I could get my Masters of Divinity
(MDIV).
As
far as I was concerned, I was going to start pursuing seminary for
the fall of 2011…
…God
had other tricks up His sleeve.
I
spent the beginning of January looking up every seminary I, or my
friends, could think of. It got to the point where I was actually
living in my future and not in the present— no bueno.
Thanks
to one of my friends, I was called out on this behavior and
encouraged to put thoughts, pursuits, and prayers of my future on
hold for 2 months, while asking a few people to step in and intercede
on my behalf.
I
explained the situation to 3 friends and relinquished all prayers,
except for asking God to open doors in March.
-FAST
FORWARD TO MARCH-
By
the time March roles around I am super eager to see what the Lord has
in store…
Now
that I am praying about my future again, I’m asking God to say
something… anything...
Without
the collaboration from my friends, they each contact me with what
they felt the Lord was saying to them over the course of the 2 months
prior.
In
various ways, they all said something about counseling.
Counseling.
I may or may not have had a skewed
definition of this…
to the point that the thought of it
was repulsive.
At the chance of exposing my pride and
arrogance, I thought counseling was for people that couldn’t fix
their own problems. I have no idea where this view came from, but I had this idea that I had a firm hold on all of my problems.. that I could handle it.
Needless to say, I knew NOTHING about
the subject.
Now I know that in an effort to be strong by handling everything on my own, I was actually weak, prideful, and guarded.
I pretty much spent the entire month
of April praying about this and asking the Lord for clarity…
May was a month of action for me.
After talking with a woman who fills a mentor type role for me, I
decided to not only pursue graduate school, but to also start seeing
a counselor. After all, this would give me some hands on experience
into the field.
I applied to 3 different schools, but
was pretty set on Richmont Graduate University in Atlanta… all I
needed to do was get accepted… which meant I had to do well on the
GRE.
At this point in time, I was still
sort of fighting God. I knew He wanted me to do this, but I honestly
didn’t really want to. I mean, counseling was so far off my radar.
So, like a good student, I didn’t study for the GRE until the 3 days
before the test. Eek!
I found out my score at the end of my
test and immediately called Richmont to see if I did well enough to
get accepted. Come to find out, they required a higher score than what I made. Guess I
showed God, huh???
NOPE.
I really was bummed that I could have
compromised my chances of getting into Richmont because I was
throwing a 4 year old’s tantrum, even though I knew that God wanted
me to go into counseling.
On July 1, I got a phone call from
Richmont explaining that I had been accepted.
Quick recap for you- I DIDN’T really study for the GRE, didn’t do well enough to actually get into Richmont, but I got accepted anyway. I’d say that it is MORE than obvious that God wants me in this program at this school.
It is always humbling to see how God’s plan for my life unfolds!
PART 2 COMING
SOON….
