All of My Life, In Every Season

I am constantly pushing ahead to the next thing.

...in a year when my undergraduate career is complete...
                     ...in two years when I've completed my internship...
                                  ...in three years when I'm looking for a job...
                                        ...soon when I'm married with children...
I fool myself into thinking that the frustrations and the stress that I am experiencing now will go away when I get to the next thing.  The current stress and frustration will...but there will be new growing pains for new situations.

I have long been an impatient person.  Sometimes it gets me into a little trouble, and sometimes it gets me into a lot of trouble.  It's something I pray about, and ask God to work on with me.

I have been learning this: God has a purpose for me in every part of my life.  He is truly taking the journey with me, and not just focused on the destination.  He doesn't want me to rush through anything, because He wants to use me where I am right now.  

A few posts ago I talked about a book I had just read by Joshua Harris.  I've continued to mull over the ideas in Harris' book after I have closed its final page.  Harris highlights the desire of young adults to want to push past their single years and find their happily every after with Mr. or Mrs. Right.  We think of singleness as a time that we just have to push past, get done with.  That's how our culture often treats it too - as a painful lonely time.  We fail to see that God has a purpose for us in that time.  There are things we need to do on our own to grow in our relationship with God, friendships we should focus on, and ministry we are called to.  God gives us this time for us to get to know ourselves and to strengthen our identity in Him.  He doesn't want us to race through it.

We can look at our future careers in the same way.  I am ready to be a registered dietitian.  If you gave me the RD exam, I would probably take it tomorrow without studying.  Not because I am prepared for the exam, but because I am so eager to work and use all the knowledge I've gained in my coursework at school.  I'm also ready to be done with homework, have my weekends open and some of the other things that go along with college life.  Those days will come.

So what if we press fast forward?  We eliminate all those pictures in photo albums that we cherish and reminisce in.  We eliminate all of the scrapbooks with our first spelling quizzes, first awards, drawings and paintings for art class.  We may think that those are small things at the time, but when we look back, it will be the small things that matter.  God wants to fill those pages.  He wants to take the time, go day by day with us.

The title of this post is from the Desert Song.  It reminded me of the passage in Ecclesiastes that talks about the seasons of our lives.  There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens (Ecclesiastes 3:1).  God has provided us time for great things in our lives, but it is His time, and He knows when we will be ready for it.  He wants to use us where we are right now.  There is never a time when we are like dead weight to God.  He is never not doing something in our lives.   God knows the right time, and when we arrive at this time, we will know that it is too.

~SP