God as my Guide

Time for an update on this journey as a follower of God! Being a senior in college, I thought I knew what was going to happen this year. I was going to work as a supervisor in the dining hall, take a class just for fun with my roommate, and live just as comfortably as I did last year. But God had other plans, so here I am at the start of my senior year, with no idea what is going to happen next.

After spending the summer with GO Ministries in the Dominican Republic, I decided to learn Spanish. When I decided this, I was not positive that I would try to go back next summer, but it's something I felt God wanted and it is after all a good idea to know another language. So I dropped the class my roommate and I were taking together this year and signed up for Spanish instead. I also had not planned on buying any books this year...that plan changed with the uber expensive package of Spanish books and materials I had to buy, but these are sacrifices one must make.

Dropping an elective to take Spanish (which does meet the intercultural requirement I hadn't taken yet) was not really that big of a deal. But quitting my job was.

It's not like I didn't have another job; in fact, I had a job that God kind of threw at me to replace my old one. Over the summer I received an email from the art center at school asking me to be an assistant in the photo lab. I had forgotten that I had even applied for that job over a year ago! I certainly had not been looking for another job, and I was about to decline it when my sister (God bless her) asked me if I had prayed about it. And since it really did not matter to me either way if I took the job or not, I saw no harm in praying about it. And it turned out God wanted me to take this job.

I thought I could work all three (my job in the dining hall and the photo lab and as a photographer for the school paper), but as I started my new journey with God, I started to think he wanted me to quit the dining hall. 'What do you mean, quit my job?!' I thought. If anything, I would quit the photo lab, because I did not really know what to do there, whereas at the dining hall, I'd been there for over two years and knew all the people and what to do. I got the most hours and the most pay there, and there was always potential for more hours. And as a college student planning on spending the summer on an unpaid internship that costs thousands of dollars to go to, more money is always a plus. But here's the thing, which is probably obvious to everyone but me: God did not call me to Indiana Wesleyan to work in the dining hall. He called me here to learn photography. And to build relationships with the people I meet here, and since I tend to avoid relationships by working all the time, quitting was probably the best option. I don't want to work my life away my last year of college; I have next year, and all the years after that to do so. Let me take advantage of the relationships I have while I still have the opportunity to build them.

So quitting a job in the dining hall and taking one in the photo lab may seem like an obvious choice, but for me, the unknown of a new job and life without the old one was an epic decision. It meant less money, more time in which I must face people, learning a new job, and telling my supervisors that I had to resign. But after I did, the release of pressure off of my shoulders was so great! I felt that I could breathe again. So I don't know what this year will look like, but I am heading down a new path with God as my guide, and hopefully some exciting stuff will take place!