This past week has been quite challenging for me. For those of you that don’t know, I’m working at Glorieta Conference Center in New Mexico this summer. It’s owned and operated by Lifeway and its primary function is hosting Fuge summer camps.
For starters, many of you that know me know that for about the past 7 months I have been looking for a full-time job and had not had a single interview for any of the over 200 jobs I applied for. That changed this past week. I had an interview on Tuesday with the Georgia Department of Natural Resources for a position as a Park Assistant Manager. So on Monday I flew out of New Mexico and back to Georgia. I got home to Georgia around midnight, woke up at about 6 AM the following morning, drove 5 ½ hours to where my interview was, interviewed for the job, drove 5 ½ hours back home, slept about 5 hours, and flew back to New Mexico on Wednesday morning. The interview itself seemed to go alright, but I probably don’t have enough experience to actually get the job, which after going down there I am perfectly fine with. This park was in the middle of the swamp and an hour away from the nearest town, church, grocery store, restaurant, etc. Not exactly the place a guy that just graduated from college wants to move to.
Additionally, this week was very challenging because my original squad, R Squad, is launching onto their race. Seeing all the Facebook statuses and blog posts made it really difficult knowing that I wouldn’t be joining them for their journey. It really made me question whether I made the right decision postponing my trip.
Finally, all my traveling this week allowed me to think a lot about what it is that I truly want to do with my life. Now I would have loved for one of those can’t miss signs from God telling me exactly what I should do. That didn’t happen. What I did figure out is that whatever I do, I want it to be something that matters, not just in this life, but in eternity. Friday night, the speaker for Fuge spoke about how we should be doing things that matter for eternity. The tag line of his message was, “If it doesn’t matter forever, it doesn’t matter.” Essentially, he was challenging the students to always look for opportunities to share Christ’s love no matter what they are doing. But I took something else away from it as a result of some of my thinking earlier in the week. Many of the jobs I’ve been looking at and applying for are very admirable, respectable professions (park ranger, police officer, firefighter, etc.) that I would love doing. They would be comfortable. They would be easy. They would make my family proud. They would be “safe.” I would be doing what everyone expects me to do after graduating from college. But I feel like God is calling me to more than that right now. God is calling me to do something that will matter in eternity. He is calling me to tell the world about his love for them. He is calling me to give up the easy route, my personal comfort, and my safety to tell the world about Him. It shouldn’t matter what my friends and family think I should do. What God wants me to do should be all that matters. After all, if it doesn’t matter forever, it doesn’t matter.
-Todd
