A Rough Draft

I expect that this blog will help me process much of the things that I’m going through right now. I don’t have a career at the moment. That frustrates me. I am 25 years old, working at Starbucks part time, and teaching Jr. Highers the same things I’m learning myself - part time as well. I am consistently fighting the battle between hating my job, wanting to quit both of them for a “desk job” so I can make more than $10 and at least be assured that I won’t work past 5 o’clock during the week, and being grateful for my jobs and having a wonderful time making cappuccino’s and lattes for an ever demanding populace. (Please take a moment now to say a prayer for my wife who puts up with my manic mood swings on a day to day basis. She is wonderful and an amazingly wise and patient woman that God has blessed me with, knowing that I would be going through this.) I thought I had an idea of what God had planned for me to spend my life doing, and he has since “pulled the rug out from under me”. He has done this to me several times in the last 2 years. I think he’s trying to teach me something. ;-) Let me give some context.
I graduated from Biola University in 2008 with a degree that is nearly useless. I say “nearly useless” because the only things that were useful were the diploma I received and the name of my major: Christian Education Ministries. It makes me sound prepared to do something amazing, when in fact it did not. I feel that I cheated my way to graduation because I did nothing to deserve it. The CE major was notorious for being the easiest major on campus, and rightly so because I once turned in the same assignment 4 times in 4 different classes. It was a total cakewalk. (Since leaving the school the CE department has been transformed into an amazing program that is preparing young people to do stellar church ministry. Thank you, Biola. Not to worry, I’m not bitter at all…) To this day, it is my biggest regret that I didn’t change majors my last semester. (My other biggest regrets are not body surfing a perfect wave in Hawaii and not sky diving while in Interlaken.) So there I was, unprepared and thus unwilling to go into the proposed career for which my major was intended-youth ministry. I was disenfranchised with the church as a whole, bitter towards my major and the fact that I had wasted my parents’ money, and unsure of what I was going to do with myself for the remaining 60+ years of my life. God has led me down several paths (college ministry, junior high ministry, church planting, and the latest, school teaching) and has “pulled the rug out from under me” on all. So here I am, working 2 very frustrating jobs that I don’t want to be working, and waiting for some direction. I am right back at square one, at the same point I was 2 years ago after graduation. I feel a little more prepared to do what I was originally intending to do, but just as unwilling as I was 2 years ago. I don’t want to work at a church. I love teaching, but after teaching Middle School for 6 months, I’m totally over it and am content to leave it forever. I still have a great passion for teaching and instructing and would love to do it at the college level, but that requires much more schooling and I want to do something besides Starbucks in the mean time. Call me crazy. I started a Master’s Degree at Talbot, but am currently unable to focus on studying because I’m too worried about making enough money to provide for me and my wife, who is also working on a Master’s Degree. Also, why should I be dumping $2500 a semester into a degree when I have absolutely no idea if I’ll be using it? I am stuck between a rock a hard place, waiting on God to come and move the rock. I am not bitter towards God, I’m just tired of not having a solution to my life’s equation. I’m on a journey, but without a direction. I’m just…wandering. And before you quote Lewis or Tolkein’s “not all who wander are lost” (I don’t know who said it because I’ve seen it credited to both), please know that I know I am not lost. I am static. I am a rough draft of myself. God, the great Editor, is fine-tuning and erasing my grammar and spelling mistakes with his giant red pen. So what I have to go on for now is just my effort to gain understanding about the world I live in, about myself, and about God. That’s what I’m doing in the mean time while I wait. To put it in a very large cliché, I’m waiting at my gate to board the plane that God has predestined for me to be on, but I’ve got my boarding pass-His Word….I’m a moron. God help me.