On What's Next

It's becoming a theme, apparently, that I only write here sporadically. Mostly because I'm not sure I really have anything to say. This week, however, I feel a blog post is needed, simply because of current life events (and I make no promises about future posts).

I just graduated from New Orleans Seminary with a degree in Missions. (For the record, my desire is not necessarily to do overseas missions, but to do urban and inner city missions.) And with events like graduation come questions like, "So what's next?" 

The answer? I don't know. 

I have no clue what the next step is, where I'll be living, what I'll be doing, or really anything along those lines. 

There are so many options I have considered: PhD, staying in New Orleans and working, moving to Atlanta, planting somewhere completely new, working in a non-profit, working for a church, doing something in social advocacy, going back into the classroom, international missions. And on and on. Each of these options are wonderful, and truthfully, I can see myself doing all of them. 

I have prayed. And searched. And prayed and searched some more. 

But I still have no peace about any of them (that, and no one is hiring in anything that I can do, except teaching). 

So I'm still here waiting. And waiting. 

I hate waiting. 

But God clearly thinks I need to wait. To not know for a little while longer and to sit in the tension. 

Sitting in the waiting is hard, because it is in the waiting that you learn and wrestle, that you strive and fight to keep hope alive, that you struggle against fears of all kinds. This period of waiting has, so far, given God the opportunity to convict, to reveal, to give gifts, to teach, and to draw me closer to Him. 

In this time of waiting, I have felt excited, ready for anything, full of possibilities, ready to jump in and help offer hope to the world. I have also felt hopeless, restless, adrift, set aside, purposeless, and forgotten. I have felt pressure from within and without to know what is next, as well as support and encouragement for me in whatever the next step is. 

So as I have graduated, and you may be wondering what the immediate plan is despite the fact that the long-term one remains unknown and I'm still in a period of waiting, here's my "for now" plan. I'm moving back to Atlanta, where my family is. Most of my stuff is moved already from New Orleans, and the rest of it is coming with me on Friday. It made more sense to me, at the time I was making plans, to go where I could live pretty cheaply while figuring out what the next step is. While I'm no longer completely sure that was the best plan, it's what I'm doing for now. And if following the Lord means I pack everything up in NOLA just to move it back, or staying in Atlanta, or going somewhere new, or doing MORE school, then so be it. 

I love this quote from Rainer Maria Rilke: "Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves...the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now.Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer." 

Frederick Buechner has another of my most favorite quotes: "The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet." 

These two quotes embody where I am right now, trying to live the questions, to wrestle them out with God, to let Him lead me even when the path is unknown. Because I know that as He leads me, He will iron out the questions, bringing me to a place where the deep gladness He has set in my heart meets a deep hunger in the world. He will lead me to the place and purpose He has prepared for me.

While I don't know much of anything, I do know that.