I actually didn't go to college right out of high school. Wether it was out of rebellion or some good forethought, I didn't go. I took a year off, and I am so glad that I did. While everyone else was rushing off to buy their very expensive piece of the pie, I was still here in Lubbock taking it slowly. I don't know how prepared everyone else was, but if they were anything like I was, they had only a tiny, minuscule notion of what they wanted to do upon which they were trying to fly a massive blimp of a decision. No. Thank. You.
I could go anywhere from here, really. I could ramble on about how college is becoming a sort of right of passage. I could talk about how ill-prepared I felt left by my education for such a pivotal decision. I might even be able to get a few good paragraphs out about how crazy it is to expect a seventeen year old to know how to build a foundation for their career path. But I think rather than using more words to further vocalize my dissatisfaction with societal expectations and my personal experience, I think I'll talk about what helped me get to where I am today.
Now I'm not referring to fully accomplishing my career goals, although God really has blessed me with a great job for this stage in life! Let's go back to what I was first saying. I had no idea what I wanted to do. I had the option of learning in front of me, but I had no idea which direction to go. Now flash forward to today. I have a much greater understanding of what I want to do with my career. I know what fields I wish to be in. I have concrete goals that I work on whenever I have time. I know where I am currently, and I know where I want to be.
Those are things that I am not sure some people ever fully realize. Every single person, wether they believe it or not, has gifts that God has placed inside of them. There is not a single person on the planet that does not have a brilliantly exciting purpose waiting to be found, planted, and watered. Max Lucado referred to this individual talent and purpose as a "sweet spot".
But what now? I grew up hearing that from various preachers. I believed it and I still do. But in the meantime, it was hard to reconcile that to what I felt, because I felt like I was the defective sheep of the herd. You know, the one that has eyes that look two different ways and runs into things a lot? That was how I felt in high school.
All of my colleagues at school were good- really good at something. Some were great at sports, breaking school records and winning every game. I was too afraid to interact with others to even try to be on a team. Many in my class killed it every morning leading worship. I was too afraid to even think about getting on a stage. A few in my art class were practically perfect, while I struggled to even get a project done in under a week because I had to keep correcting mistakes. Others were GREAT at writing, constantly receiving praise from our English teacher for their seemingly flawless grammar. I was the one receiving my paper back with all of the commas circled, homophones misused, and a whole paragraph, written in red, ending with, "See me after class". Yep. Good times.
But looking back, I see that I was wrong. I was not less talented than everyone else. And they didn't have their life completely figured out. There are some key things that have been very instrumental in my journey to self-discovery, so to speak. I don't really like the term "self-discovery" too much. We should always be in hot pursuit of God and not ourselves, because it is within God that we find our being. So that said, here are some tiny tips for anyone in any stage of life who wants to enter in to what God made them to be best at doing.
1) Pray.
Really. Pray. That is the number one thing that you can do to take steps towards finding out what in the world you want to do in life. At seventeen, and even still today, the number of things that a person can do for a job seemed to be so numerous that the amount looked impossible to properly navigate. I had some things that I kind of liked to do, but there was a sea of things that I had yet to give a go.
I flash back to the show Dirty Jobs. Anyone remember that show? Mike Rowe tried a multitude of jobs we had never heard of before. Some weren't that dirty, but almost every single one was a job that the average person had never encountered. And this was all just one category: dirty. I know you can't get a degree in "dirty", and it's not like I wanted to do anything I saw on the show. But Dirty Jobs got my mental cogs turning, and my conclusion was clear. There are numerous things I have never tried. The job that I am good at, my sweet spot, may be something I have never even heard of before! How could I definitively say that I know for sure what I should be doing if I know so little about what there is to do?!
That being said, I knew I needed someone who actually knew what I really would be best at doing. The only one who could do that- the only one who would be able to look into me and see who I was made to be, is God.
Philippians 4:6 says "Don't be anxious about anything; instead pray about everything. Tell God what you need and thank Him for all He has done." If we did that, how much of a change in our lives would we see?! This is the God of the universe we are talking about! He is the same God who created dinosaurs and spun the stars into existence. And he even has names for all the stars! (I wonder if he named the dinosaurs.) Why would we not come to Him with anything and every single thing that we need help handling? Joyce Meyer put it this way: If there were some sort of agency that could take all of your life's problems and work on them for you, wouldn't you definitely check it out? If it turned out to be true, the line would circle the building twenty-four seven!
To me, the decision of where I wanted to go to college and what I wanted to major in was incredibly pivotal. The number of directions that my life could go in could drastically change depending on where I chose to go to school and what I majored in while I was there. I had no idea of the direction in which I wanted my life to go, and this most basic step towards wherever that might be seemed simply out of my grasp.
Now, not every decision is going to hit you like that. Most decisions we make will turn out alright whichever option we choose. But if something is bothering you, don't miss the opportunity to put it in the hands of someone who will never let you down. What is important to you is always important to God, because you are important to God. Be honest with Him, and pray for wisdom and guidance for the path ahead. You will not regret it.
2)Take your time.
On the subject of college, the university will still be there a year after graduation. It will even be there two years after graduation! And three, and so on. Hearing God and getting to know what you really like takes time, so don't feel like you have to rush into anything. My dad just started his second year of being a history teacher in his 50's, and he is loving it! I'm pretty sure that time is not an issue, as far as God is concerned.
After you pray for guidance and wisdom, wait upon the Lord. When I asked God where I wanted to go to college, it almost felt like I didn't get any answer back. I felt like I was getting nothing but static from the other end. But by the end of the year, I felt sure in my decision to take year off. I waited and pursued God and his guidance, and He didn't leave me hanging.
3) Don't be swayed by past failures or what people have said about you.
For a long time, I felt like I didn't have what it takes to write. Truthfully, spelling alludes me, and comma rules confound me. When I switched schools my junior year, I was greeted by an English curriculum that was at a college level. Kudos to the high school I went to for pushing your students, but I could barely meet the challenge that was in front of me! After I writing my first paper for my sophomore English class, my teacher asked me if I wanted to go down to the lower level of junior English. There was no way that was going to happen. I considered myself to be pretty intelligent, and I wasn't going to just lay down and take what felt like a major insult.
As the class went on, though, it became clear that I was perfectly capable of getting on the same page as everyone else. I wasn't unable to meet the status quo, as my teacher had feared. I just had not yet been taught how to write at the level that everyone else had prior to this class. Not to mention that I sound terribly dry and uninteresting when writing about things I care nothing about! How do you choke down rereading and rewriting a paper if you were already bored writing it the first time!? (Sorry, Poe, but fifteen pages about you far surpasses any interest that I ever had about your poetry or your dark past that fueled it.)
I did make adequate grades for the class. Not all of it was writing. But my writing got a pounding every time my teacher helped me revise it. My goal of writing an assignment that she would say was good seemed more and more unobtainable after paper. It was a nightmare of pulling teeth to practice writing by choosing subject matter that I already had to force myself to read.
That was not a fun class. I left it feeling more ashamed of my writing abilities than I had ever felt. What was an easy- tedious but easy class for others, had not been a breeze for me. I struggled and scraped to prove that I was capable. But I had never thought I would pursue writing as any sort of career, so it was not that big of a deal to me. I figured that I could do something else that didn't have such a long contradictory list of rules, and I would be fine.
All of this because of what a teacher had said. I gravitated away from something that I truly liked because someone made me feel like I didn't have what it takes. Don't misunderstand me, though, my teacher didn't have it out for me. I never felt that she did either. I just was a little behind the curriculum, and I knew that was the case. The way in which the situation that played out still had a major impact on me. I was scared of more failure and more inability, so I shied away from discovering the seed that God had placed inside me.
But that didn't change what God had made me to do. The desire and ability to communicate through writing never left me. His purpose for my life still stood strong. After maturing into the person I am today, I can look back and take away good from that situation. You see, growing up, I moved around a lot. Up until my junior year of high school, I had never been in such a rigorous English course. I was not defective in some way, I just had not had the proper prior training!
A year after I graduated, I started taking classes at South Plains College. One of them turned out to be a writing class! Perhaps it was the small ego boost that I got from not being so behind (thank you junior and senior English!), or maybe it was my teachers methods, but I had a renewed love for writing and learning how to write! My professor started from the top by laying out the rules for sentence structure and punctuation. Our textbook was straightforward and had interesting short stories in them. I was not learning how to formulaically pound out a term paper, I was learning how to write. The world that opened up in front of me was vibrantly colorful with many places to visit and learn from! That was an incredibly stark contrast to the dingy, black and grey environment that had me hunching over a table dutifully anguishing over an assignment I couldn't enjoy. College English was my favorite class. Money well spent. My professor even had nice things to say about my writing! I even saw a pig fly!
God was not done with me after junior year. He didn't leave me in the low point that my junior English class had. He lead me to people who would encourage me to keep going and keep trying. If God has placed something in your heart, don't let the words of others or past failures deter you from pursuing your own personal sweet spot. We all have to start somewhere. None of us are born able to do what we were made to do right off the bat. We all have to learn, and part of that learning is done by failing. People in your life may incorrectly view this failure as a sign that you don't have what it takes. When that happen's, lean into God and what HE says about you. You CAN do ALL things through Christ who strengthens you.
4) Take life one small step at a time.
Don't succumb to the urge to jump the gun. Most of the time, when you ask God for guidance and direction, He will give you the next small step. After praying and asking God for those two very things, I really hoped that His answer to me would consist of a specific college. I would have been even happier if I had gotten some sort of heavenly email with a 5 year plan in it, but that's not how God operates. He will lead you in the way that he knows you can follow, and that is one step at a time.
Often, I think we even miss what God wants us to do because we are looking for that grand overreaching vision for our entire lives. We pray for the next step not ready to listen for something smaller than we expected. When you pray and take time to hear God's plan for you, don't close your mind off to even the smallest step.
When God visited Elijah (1 Kings 19), He did so in a small still voice. There was a rock breaking wind, an earthquake, and even a fire, but none of those were God's choice for a mode of transportation. Don't be fooled by the strong winds, the earthquakes, or even the fires that pass by us in life. There will be many tempting and grand opportunities that feel right, but feelings and appearance cannot be what govern our choices. All of the pandemonium could have swayed Elijah and caused him to miss God passing by. If he would have missed God's still small voice, he might have forewent the opportunity to anoint two kings and a successor. Wow!
I don't always feel like I have a major propose. My sweet spot doesn't always feel so sweet. Sometimes, I have doubts. The temptation to look at others and put my own abilities down is a daily battle. But God never leaves me. He is always there to turn my eyes back towards Him. The journey to finding out what gift God has placed in you is not the simplest path, but it is worth it. Upon entering into the realm that God has for us, we find a sense of purpose and fulfillment, and living for God is the only way to truly do that. Pursue God, and you will inevitably "find yourself". Stay with God, and you'll soon be out of the chaos and living with purpose.
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