My journey this month: Making the choice that really matters.

For a few months now, I’ve been looking at and praying about different internship opportunities.  Since I’m due for a blog post and I think you all have a right to know, I want to give you all an update on where I am and how I got here.  I have found my internship… or rather, God has provided one for me.  Choosing this internship was a crazy process, but the most important choices I’m making are about something different.  This one’s kinda long, but I’m hoping it will get you all in the loop about my life and also be worth your time in a more eternal spectrum.

When I think of being a social worker, something in my head just screams and runs away.  I’m pretty intimidated by the field because I’m intimidated by the huge social problems we’re trying to tackle.  It’s like a team of five hamsters trying to power an entire city by spinning some little wheels.

To be honest, I never actually wanted to be a social worker.  All I really care about doing is ministry and art (visual or otherwise).  The reason I’m studying social work is that, for me, the stuff I’m learning is really a combination of the two.  You take a broken world, you dream up possibilities for it, and along with some other broken people, you put together this little project made out of resources and carved out with theories.

Many of my friends are working at traditional social work agencies next semester: group homes, mental health centers, hospitals, rehab centers, schools.  I have quite a bit of respect for my classmates because these are all very hard places to work, and they all can really turn people’s lives in a new direction.  But I can’t do it.  I also just plain hate doing things the normal way.  It bugs me like an odd number bugs Adrian Monk.

So naturally I turned to a technology company in another town for my internship.  But apparently making mobile apps wouldn’t fulfill the requirement of upholding social justice.  Lame.

And then I found out about a web design internship for a human trafficking organization.  I went ahead and applied.  Then I found out it was in Connecticut.  Lame.

Then I realized that I might actually like computers a lot.  My dad told me to think about taking more classes.  But that would mean graduating the “normal way” and taking 4 years.  So I just concluded that that was stupid.  … But I eventually wised up and humbled myself and thought about it and decided to add a minor: Information and Technology Science.  Score!  (Thanks Dad!)

So that was good.  But I still didn’t have an internship.

One day in class, I was praying about other places I could look when God gave me an idea for an internship.  It was just crazy enough that it might work.

I was still thinking about waiting a semester or two, but I was still all stoked about doing something adventurous.  So I moved ahead with some of my prospects by sending out some emails and setting up an interview in Denver.

I mulled over the possibilities with Him on the hour-long drive to my interview.  And there was this one prospect that I just could not stop thinking about.  A wave of joy and excitement came over me at the thought of God using my service to transform and fill the community that was on my heart.  And that’s when I found out where my heart really lay.

My interview went great.  But that didn’t matter now anyway.  Because later that day, one of my email messages showed up in the inbox of a man named Rick John, the pastor of Fellowship Community Church — the church where I had surrendered everything to Jesus Christ.  And so I waited.

It was quite possible that I would have to give up what I knew was good to chase this unfamiliar dream.  To chase what just might have been God’s will for me.“

For multiple weeks now, I had been entirely uncertain of almost everything in my future that I had once been banking on.  As if to tear up my heart just a little more, this weekend I had some of the best times with my friends in this house that I’ve had all year — and it was quite possible that I would have to give up what I knew was good to chase this unfamiliar dream.  To chase what just might have been God’s will me.  It was quite possible that I would have to pack up everything I owned and live a completely different life in a new town.  It was quite possible that I would have to — no, choose to — leave the people who are closest to me in order to live amongst people who are practically strangers to me.  But it was just as possible that everything would stay exactly the same.

My whole life was up in the air.  I was trying to deal with my anxiety one night by going to all of the typical things I go to for comfort besides, well, God.  I even tried reading my Bible and praying, but I couldn’t even concentrate enough to do that.  I had lost all control — not just of my future, but of my own composure.  And I broke down.

No matter where He led me, I would really have to give up everything this time.’

My roommates arrived home, had the audacity to push open my closed door, and comforted me with empathy and biblical truth I knew they’d truly soaked up in their own life experiences.  For one of my roommates, my circumstance resonated with hers, since she was in the midst of preparing for a future that was not what she had planned at all.  For another, I had just broken a promise I had made to her, and yet she still sat there with me as we prayed together.  They said that God had brought me to a place where I had to depend completely on Him.  It was very good that He had me there, but that didn’t mean that it would be easy, they said.  No matter where He led me, I would really have to give up everything this time.  My lust for control, myy tight grasp on worldly comfort, my need for approval other than God’s.

I’m leaving a lot of my furniture, decorations, and art here.

I’m leaving my closest friends, the ones who know and keep my deepest secrets, who love me enough to bug me about my bad habits, who affirm me in my God-given uniqueness.

I’m leaving the Fort Collins culture I’ve learned to love, the town where you can get anywhere you need to go on a bike and where community is created through coffee and music and art.

I’m leaving the best house I’ve ever lived in, where my remarkable roommates have welcomed strangers, cooked for the hungry, prayed with saints, sheltered sinners.

I’m going to miss it all.  (Maybe even my roommate’s loud, hairy dog…  but don’t tell anybody.)  Even now I’m wrestling with despair, excitement, broken-heartedness, jealousy, and thankfulness all at once.  But I need to face up to the reality of God’s character.

If God has given me this much good so far, how much more will I like what He’ll give me next?    If He has used me to build that heavenly building of His here, won’t He use me for good when He sends me to a different wing?

Because of Christ, I am free to choose how I will see my situation.  And it will be a choice every day, every moment.”

I have the choice to believe in the truth, and only because of what Jesus did for me on the cross.  Because of His ability to separate me from my sinful nature, I’m no longer a slave to sin and falsehood and old habits of thought and action.  Because of Christ, I am free to choose how I will see my situation.