A Lil' Outside Inspiration

Today is Friday, Thank God For Fridays!  

If you've ever worked in a school setting you understand this phrase to its fullest meaning (no digs meant on those who don't work in the schools-if you would like to visit to see what I mean, just let me know). 

Don't get me wrong,  I love school.  I love teaching and there are amazing kids and co-workers I get to interact with.  I just really appreciate and understand the reason for weekends. :) 

So, now that it is the weekend and I have worked out for the night, shared some yummy Chinese take out with an awesome family just down the street and polished off some M&M's for desert I'm left wondering what to do.

Inspiration.  I need some sort of inspiration.  

Reflecting on the past couple of weeks I have been given some of this coveted inspiration in small doses by a good friend of mine.  Tonight, I was given just a little more.  In the interest of passing on this inspiration to all of you, I'd like to share.

This is a excerpt from an email that is actually an excerpt from a book that was cut and pasted and  forwarded to me by my great aunts dog sitter who is deaf in one eye and knows my childhood babysitter's grandma(only about half of this sentence is true).  

Read this with an open mind, don't even put yourself in my shoes.  Find how this can relate to your life where you are right now.

This is the thing: when you start to hit twenty-eight or thirty, everything starts to divide, and you can see very clearly two kinds of people: on one side, people who have used their twenties to learn and grow, to find God and themselves and their deep dreams, people who know what works and what doesn’t, who have pushed through to become real live adults.

And then there’s the other kind, who are hanging on to college, or high school even, with all their might. They’ve stayed in jobs they hate because they’re too scared to get another one. They’ve stayed with men or women who are good but not great because they don’t want to be lonely. They mean to find a church, they mean to develop honest, intimate friendships, they mean to stop drinking like life is one big frat party. But they don’t do those things, so they live in kind of an extended adolescence, no closer to adulthood than they were when they graduated college.

Don’t be like that. Don’t get stuck. Move, travel, take a class, take a risk. Walk away, try something new. There is a season for wildness and a season for settledness, and this is neither. This season is about becoming. Don’t lose yourself at happy hour, but don’t lose yourself on the corporate ladder either.

Stop every once in a while and go out to coffee or climb in bed with your journal. Ask yourself some good questions like, Am I proud of the life I’m living? What have I tried this month? What have I learned about God this year? What parts of my childhood faith am I leaving behind, and what parts am I choosing to keep with me for this leg of the journey? Do the people I’m spending time with give me life, or make me feel small? Is there any brokenness in my life that’s keeping me from moving forward?

These years will pass much more quickly than you think they will. Time will pass, and all of a sudden, things will begin to feel a little more serious. You won’t be old, of course. But you will want to have some things figured out, and the most important things only get figured out if you dive into them now.

Give today all the love and intensity and courage you can, and keep traveling honestly along life’s path.  

I am inspired by this passage.  The part that is most inspirational to me is the second to last sentence.  The writer has hit the nail on the head.  I want things to be figured out.  

I want God to lay this path ahead of me that is black and white.  I want Him to assure me that it is all figured out.  I want him to say, "Settle here... love these people... marry him... raise a family at this time... invest in this church..." 

But, and this is a big BUT, I don't get that.  

Instead I get, "Anna, be still."  

Just typing those words make me cringe a little.   I don't want to hear the words 'be still,'  I want God to just lay it all out.  I want my life to fall into place.  I want to feel like I'm building a home and investing in a community.  

But even more than all of those things, I want to trust God.  I know God's will for me isn't to have my life laid out in front of me to analyze, my life isn't up for negotiation nor is it something I can predict.  It's one of those things that I have to dive into before it will even be closed to 'figured out'.   

I would like to leave you all with the snippet I was given tonight that reminded me of what I shared above.

After a while you learn to build your hope on today because tomorrow's ground can be too uncertain for plans.  Yet each step taken in a new direction creates a path toward the promise of a brighter dawn.