The answer to that pressing question...

"So, you're graduating this year. What are you going to do?"

Am I the only one who gets so tired of this question? Not because it isn't a valid question. Just because people ask it all the time, and worse, I don't have a satisfactory answer.

Sheesh, I don't know. I've got ideas. I've got plans. But with the first college application hopefully heading out the door on Monday, I have no idea what will actually happen. I can't see in to the future. Sometimes I want to just look back at the thousandth person who has asked me that this week, even though it's not their fault, and scream,

"What?! Do I look like God or something?!"

But you know, I think Aaron Watson had the right idea when he suggested replying, "I am going to worship God."

I don't know what's going to happen. With everything contingent on a hundred different decisions, only a few of which will be made by me, I don't know where I'll be in a year or two. But what I really wish I could say, what I would say, if I thought they would take me seriously, is this:

"I surely don't know, but it'll be whatever God wants!"

So there's the answer folks. Feel free to ask me for specifics, but I'm warning you, I have precious few answers.

Here's the thing, though... I know that a lot of you reading this blog are in the same place. Some of you may be older, or younger. But I know many of you are at this crazy time in life when childhood is over, you're officially an adult, but you're life hasn't quite taken off in a set course yet. There's a lot of waiting. Waiting for a college to accept you. Waiting to see if you get a scholarship. Waiting to see if you got the job. Waiting for God to finally hand you the blueprints so you know where you're headed.
And in the meantime, everyone somehow expects you to already know. Adults and peers are, with the best intentions, asking you what you are planning on doing with the next few years of your life. I've asked that question myself. And some of you may be pretty sure you know what you're doing. Maybe some of you are like me... you thought you knew, but now you're here, and you aren't so sure. Or maybe you've never known.
It's so hard. I mean, it's one thing to say, "You'll find me worshiping God!", it's quite another to actually have peace with a future you can't see. Waiting on the Lord is not a sit back and relax sort of command. It's hard work, I tell you! As Brett and Alex would put it, we're hustling while we wait, and hoping the waiting end soon, and we can have a plan.
I know. I'm there right now. Exhausted, pushing myself to get the applications and the tests done, weary of the process, feeling helpless because I just don't know.
As Indigo Montoya (Princess Bride) says: "I hate waiting."
But it's a necessary part of the journey, and it's where God has me now. I'm walking this road of waiting.
Let me just assure you of one thing.
God has always known.
Work hard. Make plans. Dream big. And in the end, leave the results of your work, plans, and dreams in God's hands, because they are safer there. And so are you.

Well, that was a long and somewhat fragmented post, but I guess it kind of matches the subject, eh? I mean, if I was to pick to words to describe this season of my life, long and fragmented would be tough competitors. But you know, there's one thing that kind of wraps it all together. And that's knowing that in the end, God knows how it all wraps together. I'm growing from it! And praise God, He's walking it with me.

And I'm learning a lot from the waiting.

~While I'm Waiting~