The prospect of spending four (or so) months in a town totally devoid of people my age while working like mad to make enough money to move to greener pastures is, at times, nothing short of daunting. Don't get me wrong. I love home. It safe, cozy and special. However, when one has got the adventure bug and feels 100% stuck by a lack of post-grad funds, home can feel like a cage. This next chapter can be adequately summed up in the following four words: crafts, books, children, and self-improvment. Because, well, I'm trying my hardest to make the best out of an unplanned situation.
Has that ever happened to you? Have you made a plan, only to watch it disappear in the time it takes a mechanic to say "Oh, that'll be a $600 repair."? It's hard, man. Hard to feel like life won't really start until my zip code changes. Not that that is necessarily true, but that's sure what it feels like. I imagine this feeling is similar to the sentiments of the Israelite leaders when they were in exile in Babylon. Totally stuck, and totally removed from what their hearts wanted to be doing. It was to this group of disgruntled royals, etc. that the prophet Jeremiah wrote the following words:
This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper...I will come to you and fulfill my good promise to bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you,” declares the Lord.
Okay, I'm not going to get married and plant a garden. But I do think the sentiment of the words is applicable to being stuck in the middle of the United States when my heart is in Tennessee. Here is my CliffNotes version of that scripture:
God says: "Look, folks, you're in Babylon, so find something good about it and relax. I have a plan that is a little beyond you right now, but that does not mean I have left you behind or forgotten about you. Keep praying and hold on, because what I have in store is the bomb. Seek hard for me, and you will find me. I promise."
Hello, the most comforting thing in the world. Eternal perspective is eternally difficult to focus on sometimes most of the time, but the truth of the matter is that God's plan does not always line up with ours. His is the one that will prevail, though, so all we can do is relax and trust. No matter how stuck you or I feel, we have not been let behind by a God who is too busy with other things. He's just working out a plan that we can't see yet.
With that in mind, I have a laundry list of things to do this fall:
1) Work, work, work. (Between selling over-priced children's clothes, babysitting and the church nursery, it will be a parade of babies, which is not the worst way to earn money.)
2) Craft my heart out. (Post-grad free time, WHAT UP. Also, crafting is an outlet for daydreaming about my sweet Nashvegas apartment.)
3) Read books that will inspire. (Starting with Jane Austen.)
4) Earnestly seek Jesus, and in doing so become better fit for the next chapter.
Bring it on, Lord. I'm ready.
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