Over the years, I've found a constant thematic story in my own life and choices. I make plans; God waits until I think I have every detail ironed out to step in; He lets me believe I have everything under control.
I probably should have learned my lesson long ago; even as a child, I was a control-freak. Not in the sense that I was overly bossy (though my younger brother may testify differently to that) or obsessive-compulsive (unless we're talking about board games. Seriously. I do not mess around; my Monopoly money is organized into rubber-banded bundles and the property and Chance cards are inside separate plastic bags. I do not mess around.)
I was a control-freak in the fact that I was overly-independent. I wanted, even as a child, to make my own decisions, do everything by myself, go away from home as much as possible. I was way too eager to make decisions for myself and plan my life out. I was the kid looking at college websites in middle school.
But over and over again, God has taken the nice little plan I've drawn out and shaken it up and away, like an Etch-a-Sketch drawing. Poof! Gone. In high school, I just knew I was going to go to the Governor's School for the Arts and study creative writing my junior and senior year, and then go off to some artsy school in New York and write novels. Most of you know that story. :-)
So I finish up high school, and after years and years of swearing that I would never be a teacher, I find myself applying for the Teaching Fellows scholarship thanks to a wonderful woman who had an enormous influence on my life. A lady who would never have taught me if I had gone to another school like I'd originally planned.
And after that turn-around, I'm going through college, studying to be a teacher. God's plan merges with my desires, and I'm ready. I'm thinking I graduate college, go to grad school somewhere to work on my writing some more, and then start teaching.
Yes, well, that wasn't the whole plan either. The next big detour from my carefully (if altered) plans occurred at a place that I've come to love more than most any other: Camp Longridge. And that wasn't in the original plan either. I applied to another camp...and got rejected. But some time later, I get an email from the guy who interviewed me, wondering if he could pass my info onto the director of another camp that I'd never heard of. I think, why not? But then, the rest is history. After one summer working there, one summer wishing I was working there, and another summer working there, the world started to look at bit different. Not so simple.
CLR, combined with an eye-opening trip to the jungles of Peru on mission, took the nice little diagram of my life and turned it on its head. If you had asked me at this point three years ago what I was going to do after college, I would have said, "USC for graduate school, and then move to Charleston to start teaching."
Ask me now? I don't have all the answers (which drives a person like me to distraction) but more and more, I think that, along with teaching high school, I have something new in my future that I hadn't planned on--seminary. Years at Longridge teaching children made me so aware of exactly how much more I could learn myself. A week in the jungle trying to teach Old Testament stories made me that much more aware of how little I know.
So, the saga continues. Hillary thinks that she knows where she's going; God comes in and turns the map around. After all, you all know about my sense of direction.
