God, Just Tell Me What To Do
When I was in high school, I felt pressure to plan my future. Everyone around me seemed to know what they wanted to do, and I had no idea. I couldn’t decide where to go for school, what to major in, or what I would do after college.
Then I reached my junior year of high school. I was in English class when I realized that I’m a good writer and I actually enjoy it.
Over the next two years, I refined my plan — to go to Florida Gulf Coast University and major in journalism.Then I’d go to either Columbia University or the City University of London for a master’s degree, then move to New York City. There, I would try to intern for a magazine and eventually work my way up to Editor-in-Chief.
Anna Wintour, the current editor in chief of Vogue, became my inspiration. She studied journalism in London and worked hard to get where she is today, in the exact spot I want to be.
Something that is on my bucket list is to attending every fashion week in the world.
Once I made that plan, I felt relieved, and when I started taking classes for my major, I knew my future was set.
Then everything changed.
This past summer, I was a counselor at Lake Aurora Christian Camp. It’s in Lake Wales, which is about two hours from my house. Even though the camp is so close to home, the atmosphere is completely different, it’s refreshing.
I’ve attended the camp for years, the first time being in middle school. I met a guy at the camp, and he and I became good friends. Let’s call him Clay. In the summer of 2016, we were counselors together and hung out a lot. We talked about God’s plan a lot and how we were managing to stay devoted to Him, despite the social pressures that come with being college students.
This summer he was a lifeguard, so I didn’t see him as much. However, we still made an effort to hang because of how easy it was to talk about God to each other.
But unlike last year, I got excited when I thought about seeing him. I couldn’t help but smile when I saw him in the dining hall and my heart would beat faster when my campers talked about him.
This year, I had 10 female campers, all in middle school. I knew some of them from church, but not well. Over the course of the week, I got really close with all the girls. We talked about the pressures that they face now and what they’ll probably face in the future. We talked about social media and how it affects our self confidence. The girls confided with me a lot, and mutual trust was built.
In the middle of the week, on a Wednesday, my mood shifted. Instead of being my fun, perky self, I didn’t feel like participating. After a lot of thought and long discussions with my campers, we figured out why.
The first reason was that I may not be in the right romantic relationship. The second is that God is calling me to spend more time at the camp. Those realizations terrified me.
However, being excited to see Clay didn’t make me think that I had feelings for him though. Instead, it made me think that God wants me in a relationship with someone as dedicated to their faith as I am, the way Clay is.
My current boyfriend isn’t in the same place that Clay and I are, and his lack of faith is affecting the strength of mine. Experiencing a change of heart this summer sent a strong message, but I don’t have the courage to do anything about it yet.
I think my boyfriend and I will be great friends after we break up, but right now we’re in this tense place of not knowing where we stand. We “broke up,” but then we didn’t act broken up. We “broke up” and I couldn’t stop crying.
Now it seems like we’re good again, back in our healthy, happy relationship. I know that’s not what God wants though.
The second realization, that God may be calling me to stay in Florida and minister to kids rather than to move to New York and live a high profile life, surprised me a lot more.
After having the perfect plan and the perfect future, feeling God call me to do something different scared me. I didn’t know how to interpret His calling. I was’t sure if he wanted me to change my major, drop out of college, or stay in Florida forever.
For so long, all I wanted to do was get out of Florida. So to feel like I should stay and work on a camp in Lake Wales, Florida? That was scary.
At first, I thought that I would be able to put off working there until after I graduated so that I would have a few years.
But I’ve avoided God’s plan before and it didn’t turn out well. Avoiding breaking up with my boyfriend, for example. It caused a lot of drama and stress, and still sits in the back of my mind.
Then I tried to think of ways to make journalism work with God’s plan. I came up with a few, but I don’t think God settles for compromises.
It’s been a couple months since I got back from camp, and I’ve slowly grown more comfortable with God’s plan.
I’ve begun to see the amount of distress and separation that the youth group at my church has been going through since I left for college a year ago. Students dating for the first time and the drama of their breakups. Our youth pastor resigning and our new youth pastor too young, too inexperienced to actually say or do anything influential. Students experiencing high school pressures and the youth pastors, new and old, handling their behavior poorly.
From everything I’ve been told, my youth group is dysfunctional and falling apart.
And then I started thinking, maybe God wants me to take my youth group to Lake Aurora to bring everyone back together. Maybe He wants me to use my experiences from high school and college to teach the high schoolers how to handle pressures.
Maybe God wants me to minister to them.
If that’s the case, then it won’t affect my future.
But I don’t think that’s the case. I think that working out a way to take the youth group to Lake Aurora and working with them isn’t the plan, but it’s the first step.
Ministering to my youth group, my peers, is a big step, but not so big that I need to drop out of college or change my major. It’s a step that will help a lot of people and help me feel more comfortable speaking out about my faith and ministering to people.
After three years of feeling like my future was perfectly planned out, I never imagined being a counselor at a Christian camp for a week would have such a big impact on my life.
I have no idea what the future holds. Saying that scares me, but it’s also exciting.
I guess only God knows.
