Plans. Plans. Plans.

I wrote this entry nearly a week ago, but I figured better late than never right?

In one week I will be home…HOME…what does that really mean anyways? Njewa has been my home for nearly 3 weeks now. This has been the place we have come back to every time we have left…this place feels like home, and it is from this home that I have been doing some reflecting. Today is the first day really that I have had some quiet time. I wanted to listen to music, but obviously God wants me to mediate, write and reflect in complete silence. I could feel His eyes upon me as I reached for my IPOD shuffle and fumbled with the buttons trying to will it to turn on. It took me a little too long to succumb to the fact that the battery was dead. Then I raced to the bedroom to check the pockets of Peter’s duffle bag, which contained his IPOD touch and his IPOD. BOTH have music on them and guess what? BOTH also had dead batteries. I laughed and said, ”OKAY God, I GET IT!”

I just wanted to listen to music. Music moves me and right now I wanted to be moved, and in that moment I realized that God wants me to be moved by Him and I don’t need the music. Perhaps I rely too much on music to bring me to that place with God – that place where I come broken and empty-handed, that place where I am humbled by His mercy and grace.

So I will confess publicly that I have been struggling lately with feelings of inadequacy – with feeling as though I have not done enough nor am I enough for God, for Peter, for my family and friends. I feel as though I have nothing to offer and nothing to pass on. I was struggling with these feelings before I left for Africa, and now that I am here the struggle has simply worsened.

Before coming to Africa I wondered what good I would do here. I wondered how the Lord planned to use me HERE in Africa. I questioned my reason for going. I questioned my purpose. I questioned what I had to offer. And now that I have been here for 3 weeks…I feel even more helpless, even more inadequate. I still wonder what I have to offer. I still wonder why exactly I came, and I still don’t have any answers.

I am reminded constantly of something my beautiful and wise friend Bekah said a few weeks before we left. She said that our thoughts and feelings of inadequacy dishonor God. He has created us in His image, thus when we think negatively about ourselves and wallow in our inadequacies we look upon God negatively. I have been holding fast to this statement and I thank God for the perfect timing of her wise words.

I have also been attempting to figure out why I am having all these thoughts now, at the age of 27, and I think it is because I don’t really have a plan for my life. I feel as though everyone has some sort of a plan. My friends have plans, Peter has a plan, my younger brother even has a plan. Within this context, I am simply referring to a CARREER PLAN! Most of my friends careers are certain, some are teachers, physical therapists, counselors, pharmacists, nurses, doctors and some more are teachers, while others may be uncertain but they still know the path that will get them there. And then there’s me, and I don’t have a career plan, and I feel stuck. I feel as though I am stuck in this squishy, brown, gooey mud and I don’t know which step to take to get me out of the goo.

I think I keep hoping that God will place this beautifully wrapped package, with a shiny pink bow right in the middle of my lap and once I untie the bow and tear off the tape, I will discover the most perfect job imaginable. I hold tight to the promise in Jeremiah 29:11 – For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. PLANS…PLANS…PLANS. What are they really? We can make all sorts of plans whether they be career plans or life plans, but if God has other plans for us, then our plans are simply insignificant.

I know that God has a plan for me…He has a career plan, and I trust in that, but I still need to move forward. So then I am left daydreaming about my dream job and wondering what it is that I am good at and what it is that I want from my job. Here are some of the things I came up with…

1. I need a job that is relational and relationship focused
2. I yearn for a job that is development oriented
3. I would love something with an international component
4. Maybe something where I am involved in education, development, microfinance, women and children, marginalized groups
5. Maybe something where I can write?
6. And lastly…something that PAYS and pays well and by well I just mean $35,000 at the VERY least!

DO YOU HAVE ANY OTHER IDEAS?? WHAT DO YOU THINK I WOULD BE GOOD AT? WHAT ARE SOME OF YOUR CAREER IDEAS FOR ME? I welcome ALL suggestions!