Sunday, December 15, 2013

When you don't know what to do

This week has been crazy for us. Lots of tests and finals and presentations and projects. I'm glad it will all be over in a few days! I'm very excited that I will be graduating. After this next week, I will never have to do homework again!

While this is super happy for me, I have this fear about what will happen after Christmas break is over. Ben will go back to school and I will not. What will I do? I don't know. I've been doing school work and being told what to do so long that I don't have a clue what to do with myself now that I don't have classes and new subjects to learn. Of course we have talked about me getting a job, but even then, I don't feel that that will fill my time enough. The best I can hope for here in Rexburg is a part time job, and we'll be staying here at least until Ben graduates in 2015. 

I've been wondering a lot lately about what exactly it is that Heavenly Father wants me to do at this time in my life, and so far I've come up empty handed. I haven't the slightest idea what the best thing for me to be doing is. As much as I try to come up with a direction, I feel like I'm walking into this really blind. Of course, I know that God doesn't give us all the answers at once. He will light the path in front of us only a few steps at a time, and we have to have the faith to keep walking.

I have this sneaky feeling that life is always going to feel like this. It will always be a matter of knowing only a few steps at a time what is coming my way, and sometimes I won't even get that much warning. Even though it's frustrating, I'm glad that God leads us that way. I think that if we knew all that He was going to hand us in life, we would probably argue with Him and say that we can't do it.

I remember a few years ago I was helping with a volunteer group on campus here at the University. We did an activity where they blindfolded us and took us to a field and left us there. We weren't allowed to take off the blindfold, but we were told we had to make our way to the meeting place where everyone was supposed to be in the end. At one end of the field we could hear beautiful music playing, and at other parts of the field there were a lot of noises coming out of other speakers. These included popular songs from the radio, radio news reports about politics and other world issues, and sounds of explosions from movies and video games.  They were distracting, and if we walked in the direction of these noises, we would get farther away from the music. However, if we walked in the direction of the music, we would find a strong rope that was strung along the path that would lead us to the meeting place. We had to walk along holding on to that rope, and just trust that it would take us to the right spot, even though we couldn't see it. The path got really hard. It seemed like it was going straight up and that I was rock climbing just to hang on. It seemed like I was on it for at least 2 hours, but I finally reached the top and was told to take off my blindfold. I was shocked at what I saw.

I had just climbed up a hill that really did go straight up. I would never have attempted to climb that path if I could see what I was doing, even though the rope was there. In fact, when we were finished with the activity we had to go back down the hill to get our things and go home, and most people tripped and fell down. It was interesting that people tripped more when they could see what they were doing than when they only had to rely on the rope.

I learned two life changing things from this. #1 is that if we let ourselves get distracted, we will wander aimlessly in this life and never accomplish anything worthwhile (that comes from the noises vs. the music). #2 is that God wants so much more for us than we do. If we trust Him and do things His way, we will be able to accomplish anything that comes our way. If we demand that He does things our way and that He tell us the entire plan before we start our journey, we will never finish the race. We will let our fears get the best of us and we won't be brave enough to try.

So even though I have no idea what is coming next in my life, I know that I'll be able to do it. As much as I would love to see the path in front of me, I'm kind of glad that I don't. I will be able to accomplish so much more by just trusting Him and taking things one day at a time. Prayer is so important to this, because I have to make sure that I'm getting my daily light from God. If I don't make sure that I'm consantly holding on to that rope (my connection to God) then I will get lost by the distractions around me and I'll stop moving forward. By making sure that I keep communicating with God then He will light my path each day. He will do the same for you if you ignore the distractions of the world and keep communicating with Him through prayer and reading His word. I know this is true!

2 comments:

  1. Thanks, Gauchay. I really needed to hear this. I read it when you first posted it and I read it again today. Where I am at in life, it is easy to feel like I'm wandering around aimlessly with no real purpose. It's easy to forget where my direction and guidance needs to be coming from. Not from my job, not from my calling, not from my hobbies. From my Heavenly Father. Thanks for the reminder!

    (Auntie) Laura

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  2. Hey, thanks for your comment, Laura. I'm glad that it helped. I've realized that this blog is helping me more than I thought, because I seem to have fallen into the same trap of not feeling like I have a purpose, and then when I reread this I realized I alreayd had the answer =)

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