wordless

There is nothing singular about being a second semester senior and having frequent panic attacks about the future. I've been gulping down my anxieties about the future for some time now, and I really wish I wasn't. I have this awful notion about my future--that somehow it's going to just suck in fullest sense of the word and that God is out to get me and make my life dreadful. And those are shameful thoughts because don't I know how much He loves me? Aren't I supposed to be this empowered woman of God (debatable)? But mostly I feel ashamed because after all God has done in my life, and no matter how much I really do love Him, I do not trust Him enough. I still become stricken every time my mind glances towards the future.

Two weeks and two days ago or so, I was still drawing blanks about the future. Two weeks ago, God began to poke and prod me and since then, the future has begun taking shape. First, at church there was a distinct, clear call from God to return to Kenya this summer. When I heard Him speak such a thing to me, I was reduced to tears--not of happiness or joy, but of sheer terror. A lot of the hard memories from Kenya, those moments where I thought God had forsaken me, and the even worse memories when I forsook Him they still feel too raw to the touch. But as I was hunched into myself on the hard wooden pews, my hair a shield for my tears from curious eyes, with the additional hope that God wouldn't see them either, He just sat with me and let me argue with Him. After all was said, I whispered a very tiny "yes" in my heart, where no one but He could hear.

But my life is hearing the echoes and feeling the reverberations of that still, small "yes," in ways yet unbeknownst to myself. A week ago I applied for an internship at a small, independent publishing company in San Francisco and wonders of wonders--I got it. Somehow, God just worked it out, and I do believe that it's significant that I got this internship after I said "yes" to Kenya. So now I have an internship and am confirmed to go back to Kenya this summer, this time around as a staff on the Global Project, which, despite my initial disquiet, I am so incredibly joyful about.

I don't know how to make sense of these things. God is dropping things over my head so suddenly, and yes, the future is beginning to be molded by His capable hands, but I can hardly discern its form. All I know of the future is the next six months and beyond that--nothing.

For now, all I can do is be speechless at the gifts God has given me for the next few months, and wordless as I watch Him continue to mold my future, wondering what it will look like in the end.