Love God. Love People.

Today, I was shown something that pretty much sums up what I want to do with my life.  My vague ideas for a career pretty much summed up in one tiny url. www.mediastorm.org If you’ve never heard of it, don’t feel bad – neither had I.  Until my Journalism 101 class today, that was.  It was brought up by our professor as an example of how the internet is used in reporting.  We watched a video that literally left my speechless.  As I watched I thought “This. This. This is it! This is what I want to do!” I felt my palms get sweaty, my heart beat faster, my chest constrict.  I wanted to run out the door and jog to New York (where mediastorm is located) and beg for a job.

That being said – I’m pretty sure if that’s what I want to do, that I’m in the wrong major.  Most of the video would probably be placed under the categories of “Media Graphics” or “Photojournalism”.  And here I sit, a Journalism major.  Granted, I have taken the first step of applying and interviewing for a spot in the Photojournalism program.  However, whether or not I’ll get in is still unknown.  What if I don’t?  What if I get in and find out that I would rather do journalism?  What if I find that I actually hate photojournalism?  What if I try to both and am an absolute failure at each one and end up selling off pieces of my equipment to pay the rent for my cardboard box?

For someone who hates uncertainty, I have certainly chosen two possible careers that are pretty much defined by their uncertainty.  And I’m uncertain about even wanting these careers that are uncertain.  Uncertain squared.  Ugh.

If there’s one thing I can definitively say about myself, it’s that I’m a planner.  I like lists. I like calenders.  I like schedules.  Vacillation and indecision drive my absolutely crazy.  Honestly, if I could, I would choose to know everything about my future – my career, who I’ll marry, where we’ll live, how many kids I’ll have.  I have often lamented to friends about the uncertainty of my life.  “I trust God,” I moan, “but I would really appreciate it He could just like, submit a blue-print or something and let me sign off on it!”  We all laugh, but really – is that trust?  Is knowing what will happen – even in rough blueprint form – trust at all?  No.  That’s trusting myself.

Perhaps with my intended choice of career, and my own uncertainty about my major at the moment, is God’s way of getting me to trust Him.  “C’mon,” he’s pleading, “I know what I’m doing.  If you’d quit holding onto that tiny ledge, I’d pull you up to the mountaintop.”  And I know this.  I understand this.  And yet, I’m still clinging to my tiny ledge, my little rock of familiarity, of plans and lists and calendars.

It is one thing to know that I should trust God’s plans for my future.  It’s another entirely to do so.  But if there’s one thing I do trust, it’s that God can change my heart and help me to trust.  In that, I trust.

“For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for wholeness and not for evil.  Plans to give you a future, and a hope.” Jeremiah 29:11

Kingsley\’s Crossing