45 pages...

...until the end of the semester.  That breaks down into two term papers and a take-home final in the next 7 days.  I'm locking myself away until then, but I promise after April 30, I will have a good update.  There's lots to tell...

Trust

"I don't know."  That's pretty much the answer I give people when they ask me what I'm doing this summer.  Not because I haven't thought about it--believe me, I have--but because there are so many pieces and I have very little control over how they will come together.  When I make decisions, I like to know all my options, set them in front of me, make pros and cons lists, get input from friends and family, and pray, of course.  Pray is last on the list, not because I don't care what God thinks or because I don't believe he is always leading and guiding me, but because I generally think God communicates to me through all those other things.  God gave me logic for a reason, so in the absence of clear direction otherwise, I'm going to use it!

But it is easy for me to come to rely on logic and reasoning and analyzing, at times almost letting God become a corollary to the decision-making process.  In this season, God is challenging me to trust him to guide me in the absence of real information upon which to base my decisions.  Because when it comes to this summer--which, I might add, is just 3 weeks away!--I have very little real information.  For a while, I was waiting to make decisions until I knew more.  Until I heard back from this organization about that internship, until I found out about that job, until I nailed down a place to stay, etc.  But a few weeks ago I realized that the information I thought I 'needed' wasn't forthcoming, and I was going to have to make some decisions without it.  That kind of decision-making is a lot scarier!  I mean, what if I make the wrong decision?  What if I choose something, and then there is no internship, no job, no place to live?  And that's when I realized, God is calling me to trust him.  To seek him for direction, and then to trust that he will show me what to do.  It's one thing to have two paths in front of me, and to choose to walk down one of them.  I mean, either way, I know there will be earth under my feet.  But to not see the path, and to take a step into the darkness in the direction I think God is leading--that involves trust.

So I have been making decisions, in the midst of waiting for calls back on internships, in the midst of not knowing if I will have a job or any kind of income, in the midst of not knowing exactly where I will live.  Decisions have had to be made, and so I have been seeking God and stepping out.  Last weekend I decided I will be moving out the house where I live and work as a nanny at the end of this month.  It was a decision between leaving this month, or waiting until the end of May, and I decided to leave when my semester ends at the end of April.  I have a place to stay for the month of May, and then another place to stay for the rest of the summer, so those pieces at least have started to come together.  What I still don't know is whether I will have an internship or a job or both or...  I am waiting for those pieces to come together and making decisions one at a time, trusting God to lead me one step after the other.  It can be a little anxiety-inducing at times, but really, I'm not worried.  What do I have to worry about? God has never given me any reason to doubt he'll always take care of me.  So all in all, I'm enjoying the adventure.  It's a mystery, and I'm just waiting to see what part God will fill me in on next.