God Works In Blatantly Obvious Ways

Life is weird. Very weird.

I've got this sneaking suspicion that God hates complacency. He's always in the business of shaking things up and messing with me the second things seem average, mundane, or even hopelessly impossible. It happened multiple times as a kid moving place to place, and it seems to be happening more frequently now.

They aren't all bad changes, exactly, but wow it makes things frustrating. At least, I used to think so. For 22 years I've tried to figure out what the heck was going on and why things weren't going my way....but I failed to take into account that I'm a stubborn jackass. Tossing that little variable into things forces me to realize something new:

Life may be weird, but it isn't random. And it certainly isn't impossible.

(AHHHHHH! Pathetically optimistic sentences! Get it off! Get it off!!!!)

Sorry about that. Anyway, I've had to come to terms with a lot this semester. Most of it I brought on myself. Setting insane goals for pretty much everything and then not doing what I had to do to achieve them? Yeah, that's me. And yes I DO in fact still expect to succeed at all those insane goals. (Shut up, it makes sense.)

Perfect example, as well as the reason I'm writing all this: Grad school apps. I put them off. I didn't look into what other schools wanted me to have done (observation, classes, etc). I didn't care. I procrastinated.

And remember, this is my future we're talking about here. Even that didn't get me motivated. It's actually pretty incredible to look back at that mess....kind of like driving right past a really nasty pileup you just missed totalling your car in.

I used to think that God didn't want me in this as a career. Sometimes I even entertained the thought that all those people who made fun of me and wanted me to be a pastor were God's less-than-cool way to nudge me towards the sem. Now, I couldn't be more confident that this is what I'm supposed to be doing.

He kept me alive on a 2.5 hour-stretch of I-80, on a Friday, at 6am in a blizzard, through 8am rush hour traffic, in Omaha, while other people were sliding off and crashing all around me.

God, You showed Your hand. And frankly, it was what I needed more than anything.