To be busy is to be happy?

So I'm busy. That's really all I can say right now. Between four classes (two of which include a ridiculous amount of lecture/lab time...), applying for programs here at Gustavus, applying for summer jobs, visiting my adopt-a-grandma, training for a half marathon, keeping up with my friends, and still maintaining a relationship with God, all I can say is I'm busy. And I am tired.

The Beginning.

I'm meant for something meaningful. Something special. I'm not saying this in a way to aggrandize myself or to give myself self-confidence. I just have this feeling, this innate sense, that God has great plans for me. If only I had some sense of what they are.

Perhaps God's plan for me right now includes not having one. It involves not knowing what I'm going to do with the next 6 months, the next year, the next forty years. Perhaps God is teaching me the lesson of trust. My entire life has been structured. College was expected, not chosen. I'm not saying that I begrudge my decision to go. In fact, I think college is one of the best things I have ever done. But previous to it, I hadn't worried about what I would do with my life. Ideas had flitted by me and I had occasionally entertained a few (firefighter, paramedic, cancer researcher) but never latched on to one as my "calling".

College is an entirely different world. Everywhere I look I feel this pressure, this frenetic search, this unstoppable weight constantly asking me the worst question, "So, who is God calling you to be?" I can honestly answer this question by saying that I am a child of God. My identity is in Him. He has filled me with His spirit. But sometimes, I think I'm just regurgitating the lines handed to me in Sunday school, in youth group, in worship. I know them to be true, but I wish they were more tangible. I wish my relationship with God wasn't something I constantly felt guilty about not keeping up on. One of my weaknesses is my tendency to drop relationships when I am not around people. With God, it sometimes feels like I'm always running a step behind, trying to catch up to God and ask him what he thinks. Life just moves so quickly and I can't keep up.

A year ago, I was worrying about what color prom dress I would wear. This is not to say that I didn't have deep thoughts. I was struggling with where to go to college, with my relationship with my boyfriend, with keeping up my grades. But they were not the same issues as when you don't believe you're smart enough to do something or you don't have enough courage to fail. College, instead of making me feel more directed, more "me", has revealed that I have no idea who I am.

I know who I want to be. I want to be someone passionately seeking after God and his purposes. Someone who draws people in and is easy to talk to. Someone who displays the radical love only possible through relationship with God. The problem is I don't know how to get there. I don't know what career to head towards so that I will be used best there. I have specific gifts, specific strengths, but I don't have direction.

So this first post is all over the place, but it's all true. It's me. It's out there and revealed. I'm beginning to believe that this feeling of not having a plan may be one of God's most ingenious ideas yet.