Thoughts on buses.

My whole life I've chased after being comfortable, safe and restful.
God is usually pulling me out of that place, thankfully.

And I haven't ever felt the tension between them as sharply as I do at this moment. I'm at a crossroads of figuring out which jobs to accept or turn down, apply for or avoid. It's here that I can either get lost in trying to craft my life story for myself, or cling to God desperately and confusedly and wait for Him to direct me. I've been straining to hear the Holy Spirit more than ever before. I'm also just trying not to be retarded.

The questions of my life... Am I called to campus ministry? Should I stay on the East Coast? Should I travel? Why do I not feel called to missions and why do I so desperately wish I was? Should I ever go to grad school?

Then there are the deeper and not-so-great questions I don't like to admit are running through my head. Like, Am I capable of accomplishing anything mature? Who is an adult? Is that me? How do I avoid failure and pain? How do I stay comfortable and have a good story to tell at the same time? How can I be happy?

And the question above all questions, what is God's story being told through me?

While hanging out with my friend Michelle this weekend, I compared this time of life like being at a bus station. There are like, 17 buses you have bookmarked on your computer, and they all leave at different times. Some of them leave an never come back. Some of them will come back a year later. But you're standing there, anxious not to miss a bus. And of course, you have to get on the Right Bus. Well, there could be several Right Buses. But there are definitely some Wrong Buses. And you're not sure which is which, and you really don't want to get stuck on the Wrong one, because what if you could never turn back and get back to the bus station? What if you have to ride it forever?

So you apply for all 17 buses. Some of them never give you tickets and you pretend this doesn't terrify you. Some of them leave the station before you even realize they were there, and you panic more because what if that was the bus you were supposed to be on? Some of them invite you on board but you're not sure if you should get on because it follows a route that you weren't originally headed for. It's a mad whirl of buses arriving and leaving and circling around you. The exhaust fumes are filling your brain. Which one...which one?

Some of your friends are getting on buses that are headed for certain cities or industries, and you wonder if you should just get on their bus. Some people you know already had their bus ticket like a year ago and already have their seat by the window and are waving at you from the bus smugly and you wonder how on earth they managed to get everything figured out? You're mostly happy for them but also suspicious that they just settled for something so they wouldn't feel the same panic rising up in your throat every time you think about May.

Then there are a few buses that can take you home, and it might be safe enough just to get on that bus and wait for another bus, you know, later, after you figure things out. And you're not even sure what that means or what that would look like. There are grad school buses and fellowship buses and real grownup job buses. They all start to whirl together in your brain. And you can't stop applying, because you might miss The Bus, the one you're really supposed to get on. And if you have to write one more cover letter or look at your resume for one more second YOU THINK YOU MIGHT PUNCH OUT A WINDOW. But you can't stop.

AND somehow your professors expect you to be a student right now. They expect you to act like a normal person who doesn't want to burst into tears when her alarm clock goes off, or expect you not to be filling out job applications in class and focusing completely on their fascinating and engaging lecture, and expect you not to fight back stress tears for a full 50 minutes as they talk about upcoming projects and papers, because papers don't feel as important as these buses leaving, and you wish it was just all over and the transition was done, and you were wherever you were headed already.

Well, I wish that a little bit.
And then I am grateful for the journey, the process of pushing panic away with prayer, of sitting with piles of applications and my brain swirling and remembering, I am small and He is great. My life is not important and it is. I am infinitely small and made of dust, but I matter in God's heart. "As for me, I am poor and needy, but the Lord takes thought for me" (Ps 40). Jobs matter and they also do not. The future matters, but only because God has decided that I matter. 

And whether I'm in New York living my dream or waitressing in New Jersey at home doesn't matter, and it does. It doesn't matter because I have a God who will sustain me and delight me through all my short, withering-grass years of my small, short life, and that a few years from now God will be hugging me in heaven and the salary and the apartment and the vacation days and the ways I spent my days on earth will fade away.

But it also does matter. It matters so much, because I have a God who lovingly crafted me to be able to write, to express myself, to be genuine, to bring people together, to encourage, to advise, to organize. He sparked passions inside me to guide women into freedom in Christ, to have a hand in ending poverty in the U.S., to speak out against lies and apathy, to be a wife and a mom. And I am all of these things on purpose.

So those buses do matter. And they don't. And guys, in a few months, I might get on what might feel like the Wrong Bus. I might hate it. I might ride the Wrong Bus my whole entire life. Or I might be talking to you in a few months, my laptop on my lap as I sit in the bus station, bored, alone, wondering what I did wrong and doubting whether or not God  really loves me and works all things together for good. Or I might be on a totally awesome bus. Who knows. But it doesn't matter. And it does.

I'm thankful I can rest in God during this season of life, and not in a passive way at all, but a I-just-finished-a-paper-at-5am-and-I-don't-know-how-to-breathe-on-my-own sort of way, the way that makes me need to throw myself on my bed late at night like I throw myself at Him: desperate, aching, tired, confused, weary. This is an active seeking of His peaceful presence, like a thirsty hiker looking for a cool stream in the wilderness who will die without it.

My friends, especially my friends who are seniors or at a similar sort of crossroads of decision-making, it's my prayer that we carefully fill out those applications from a place of trust in the Lord, and not an overwhelmed panic or a grasping at control over stories which do not belong to us.  Let us be poor and needy for a God who takes thought for us.

Love you all.
xoxo Jo