education.

hey there, loyal readers. so, to catch you all up. in the past few months, i have: been to new orleans, hendrix, home home, and back again. i got a promotion, so now i have a more diversified work load with more responsibility (something of a mixed bag, as it is both a tremendous learning experience and a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants, one-averted-disaster-after-another kind of experience). the school of christian mission was super amazing, as usual. teaching my class on sudan was a great experience, not in small part to the gf's awwwwesome posters/hand-made journals/spiffy powerpoints. just before i left for the school of mission my roommate and i decided that it was time for me to leave the big orange house. while i was back in conway, catching up with lots of old friends and stressing about lesson plans and life plans, i found that it is not time for me to go to law school. i don't really know what i want anymore. i feel really lost in a lot of ways...but somehow, i manage to feel kind of hopeful about it. i know that eventually some kind of school will be necessary to make a career happen for me. right now, i am gaining valuable management/customer service/business skills and thinking about how i want to order my life and how to get my life in order. it's taking a little longer than i would have liked, but you can't hurry love...or vocational discernment.

i guess i'm a little embarrassed. it's profoundly difficult to admit that even though i've gone through a lot of personal growth in the past several years, i am only marginally closer to finding a life path that feels authentic. however, i suppose that structure can be a roadblock. i'm trying to push myself a little less and have a little more fun. i've always been kind of all work-no play, thinking that industriousness would lead me straight to my vocation. perhaps relaxing and letting the blurry edges become a little clearer is the perfect antidote to my frenetic, fever-pitch, puritanically driven life. i think i was moving so quickly, pushing myself to become a certain person, that i lost sight of who i really am. there are many ways in which i do not feel i know myself anymore. but it still feels a little shameful--maybe because i so acutely feel the brevity of life--that many of my friends are beginning careers or finishing up graduate/professional school while i flounder with my sense of self and sense of calling. i try really hard not to compare myself to my peers, but i can't seem to help it. i'm smart and accomplished, capable of almost anything i put my mind to. i'm an industrious hard worker--but the hard work can't push me to find my passion. on some level, it feels a little like failure, compounded by the shifting sands of what seemed like stable friendships and the confusion of experiencing the intimacy of real relationship (and how bad i am at all things relationship, though i'm desperately trying to learn how not to run away from intimacy).

so, i guess that catches you all up. that's all the stuff i haven't been blogging about. i barely journal about it. really, my gf, my mother, and my therapist are the only people who actually know about the extent of the grief and confusion i've felt in the past month. it's been a whirlwind, so finally, i stopped. first i stopped eating and sleeping. then i stopped engaging the world around me. then i stopped the "plan." you know, the five or ten year plan. it's all been torn down, and in its place is an expanse: an expanse of possibility. of joy. of hope. of love and learning and laughter. of sleep and patience and beauty. i have finally hit the wall, and i am learning (very ungracefully) to let life happen and to not force everything. it's been one hard lesson after another, but it's that all-important lesson that my life seems to try to teach me every so often: it's time to slow down, recharge, and rethink my life's direction.