When I was young, I never knew how to answer the question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” People say things like teacher, astronaut, marine biologist, doctor, etc. From what I can recall, I don’t remember having one thing I always wanted to be. This same uncertainty followed me all throughout my high school years. “What do you want to study in college?” I had no answer. No confident answer anyway. I got to college, and guess what? I still had no idea what I wanted to be when I grew up. I knew everything I didn’t want to do, which was literally just about everything you could think of. People would ask me, “Well, what are you passionate about? What do you like to do?” Still, the only confident answer I could give was that I am passionate about Jesus.
Not having an answer to this childhood question entering into my adulthood really bothered me. What was I going to do with my life? Everybody seems to have some idea, so why don’t I?
God told me why towards the end of high school, and He started teaching me a lesson. It was a simple lesson, but hard to live out. He said, “Rachael, I want you to walk by faith.” Every believer is called to live this way (2 Corinthians 5:7), but I personally felt the Lord telling ME, and now I can see why. 11th grade was just the beginning of the many years God was calling me out to live by faith alone. He wanted me to learn what it looked like to let Him be strong when I am weak, to relinquish what I wanted and let God replace it with something better, and to walk through the uncertainties of life yet still be confident.
Walking by faith is what got me through college, to be honest. I don’t know if I could have sat through as many classes as I did had God not told me to live by faith and reassured me that my future was in His hands. With 90% of students having a career plan and knowing what jobs they would apply for after college, it would have been so easy to get discouraged that I didn’t have any of those things. Every time my heart came close to aching because I was living in the unknown, God would remind me He has more for me than a 10 year business plan. And He did. He gave me the World Race, and I cannot imagine not having this experience.
What is the plan after the race? You got me. But through situations, experiences, seasons and people God has placed in my life, I have learned how to walk by faith. Pressing into God’s heart and learning to trust Him is something I would never trade for a career plan (though career plans are not a bad thing). I don’t know the map of my life. I don’t know which turns to take. I don’t even know what my destination is here on earth. What I do know is God is taking me on an adventure, and it is okay to not know the detailed agenda or have the map in front of me. Actually, it’s better this way.
I have a thought, and it is this: God didn’t put desires in my heart for a specific job because He was going to be sowing in me a heart for missions. Who knows if missions work will be something I do after the race, but that passion to love, encourage, pray for and support missionaries will always be there. That much I know.
My childhood pastor said to me once life is like driving a car at night. Your headlights give you just enough light to see what is directly in front of you. As you drive, you see a little bit more and then a little more, but you can’t see miles and miles in front of you. In the same way, God shows us little bits of life at a time. The rest is WALKING BY FAITH.
