Sarah sat near me in Chorale and on several of our bus trips she and I got to be good friends. On one such trip, Sarah shared her vision with me. In the weeks that followed, the more I thought about her vision, the more I realized that, although she wants to be married, Sarah had a life purpose bigger than marriage (something that girls often lack). I’ve asked Sarah to write about her idea and share what God has taught her through this.
____________________________________
Over the last six years or so, a little idea of mine has
developed into a career plan – or maybe I
should say a vision for a ministry. Kind of both.
I should explain. A lot of different factors all combined to
produce this idea of a “real-life Whit’s End” from Adventures in Odyssey – a
café of sorts, run as a ministry to kids and teenagers. (AiO is a radio drama
for kids produced by Focus on The Family. In a nutshell, it’s about an
eccentric ice cream shop, called Whit’s End, and it's even more eccentric owner, employees, and the kids who come
into the shop. I always wished my hometown had a Whit’s End.) It took a long
time to put this idea into words, and then to actually think seriously about it
being possible. I didn’t expect it to stick, but it did. I am now a junior at
Maranatha Baptist University, with a business management major and a Biblical
counseling minor. I have a passion for working with kids and teenagers. I can’t
wait to see the Lord use me in their lives.
I do believe that if God gives you a passion and a plan like
that, He’ll both mold your plan to
fit His and He’ll make it happen if
you let Him.
But, as I’ve been learning this semester, God doesn’t work
on our calendar. As much as we think we have a plan worked out, it’ll never
work out that way. As my plan grew and matured and actually became my career
plan, I began to set dates to it. I called them goals.
- Graduate from high school with my AS in business in 2015. (Check.)
- Graduate from college with my BBA in 2017. (Make that 2018 – Transferring schools added a semester.)
- Find a church to partner with to get the café started.
- Also, get married.
- Open the café in 2018. (Who knows when, now.)
- Run the business and do ministry for a few years. Find people to train to run the store, working myself out of a job because they’re just fantastic.
- Step back from the business side of things, in order to homeschool my now-school-age child(ren).
- Have the best of both worlds.
Sounds pretty great, right? I think so too. That’s why I’d
love it if it works out that way. There are a few slight problems with this plan, though.
The first problem is that it just doesn’t work this way. The
chances of getting out of college and finding a place to start this business –
and a church to partner with – are slim. Chances are, it’ll take some time to
find a place and a church. I’m starting to get used to the fact that I need to
trust God enough to believe that He’ll make this happen no matter what – even
if I end up having to work a few other jobs before that.
The other problem with – err, adjustment to – this plan is
that “getting married” part. All the way through high school, as I was making
my plan and imagining life after college, I always expected to be married right
after college. (In case you weren’t aware, Bible colleges are famous for their
matchmaking skills. Half of all alumni from my school marry other alumni.) It’s
not that I chose my school specifically for the odds of meeting my future
husband there. I chose MBU because of the Biblical foundation for both
counseling and business, which were both critical in my school choice. Anyway,
the Lord has shown me this year that I basically won’t be getting married
straight out of college. So that’s been an adjustment.
When I was asked to write this blog post, the topic
suggestion I was given was “Having a purpose in life bigger than marriage.”
You’ve read about what this means to me; whether or not I get married, the one
thing I know is that the Lord created me to bring Him glory and to allow Him to
work through me in others.
Lest you think I’m a goody-two-shoes with her life all
figured out, perfectly content with her current situation: I’m not. I believe every word I’ve written, but that doesn’t mean
I’m content. I want to get married. There are days when I really just want a
strong arm to wrap around me, a pair of reassuring eyes to comfort me, a
shoulder to cry on… There are days when I really wish I had a boyfriend. My
girlfriends can attest to this. I thought I was content for a long time until a
girl in my dorm put it this way and made me reconsider my contentment: “If your
future looked just like your present – if you never got any more than this –
would you be content? Or is your contentment conditional – is it framed by an
expectation of something more in the future?” (She said something along those
lines during devotions. That’s my paraphrase.)
I’m wrestling with this balancing act: On one hand, I have a
calling to serve the Lord; I don’t want to do anything else with my life. On
the other hand, I honestly can’t imagine that life without a husband, and I
have a hard time being content with the idea that I haven’t been promised
anything.
But enough about me. I have two questions for you.
What’s your purpose
in life? Are you living to get married (or to have that prestigious job, or
to make a major discovery, or to make money… you get the idea)? Or is your
purpose in life to bring glory to God?
Are you content? If
God suddenly showed you that you would never get something you’ve looked
forward to for a long time, how would you react? Is this something you need to
work on with me?
- Sarah Oman
No comments:
Post a Comment