Last night I played Life: Twists and Turns with friends. It's the same basic game, except each person gets a credit card instead of real money and you collect life points. You make the choice to start at Love (marriage/kids/friends), Live (experiences/travel), Learn (college), or (something that involves working). Each has it's benefits and you can move quickly or slowly through each section of life to see who gets the most life points in the end. We learned at the very end that getting married early (and having 7 kids) is the best way to get life points, although you are very poor.
We each made choices about how to go through life, when to buy a car, get married, or buy a house.
It helps us remember that we can't do everything at the same time and some things we have to wait for.
In my actual life (not last night's game), I chose to go to college, graduate, keep going to school while working. Now this looks just like I am focusing on my education which is a great understatement. Each summer, I work at a camp somewhere to get more life experiences. I also work during the school year, as an RA, substitute teacher, or now a Graduate Assistant to prepare for my future career and have fun. Plus, I had the amazing ability to spend a semester in Australia studying... hidden under the 4.0 was hours of building friendships and learning more about God and myself. So while I've waited on the "love" track, I have built so many friendships and done what God has called me to do (for the most part).
As I mentioned yesterday, we tend to want everything to fall perfectly in place in our own scheduling. I wrote my plan from my junior year of high school. For any guys reading, I would alert you that most girls regularly update their 5 and 10 year plan... but they have one. Mine for most of college was: graduate while being in a long term relationship, go to grad school, and get married after grad school with Teach for America still in the view. I think late in my junior year of college I realized this wasn't going to happen. So I made another change... I no longer have a structured timeline for when I want things to happen. I know that God loves me and will provide good things to His children who ask. My focus now is just to serve God in the place(s) gives me. I'll finish my Masters in the next year (Dec, Jan, or May), work (full-time locally next year or part-time next year and full-time out of state the following year), get a relationship whenever the time is right, and keep serving in the ways that I keep finding. I'm not moving until I've been given directions on where to go and been given permission to leave. Right now: I've been called to help as the 'old' person on campus and to help led the kids on Wednesdays. This is my mission right now and how God is preparing me for my future.
With that being said, it's a constant battle for me to remind myself that I don't have to worry about finding the right guy for me. The desire to get married, and have kids, is regularly present especially as more friends get married. But I know that my call right now is to wait and to serve God in other ways while preparing myself to be the wife my husband deserves. Proverbs 31 provides directions on how to be the right kind of wife while 1 Timothy 4:12 provides support for me in my current mission. It states, "don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith and in purity." This is the verse I try to live by and I'll probably do an series of blogs specifically on it as it constantly is rolling around in my head. (It helps that I have a poster of it on my bedroom wall.)
Since I seem to be getting wordy, I'm going to close with Isaiah 40:31.
"But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint." (KJV)
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