In the Beginning

It's been awhile!! I'm heading towards the end of my "winter break" so you can expect some posts from me this week(end).

Now that I'm home, I've been hearing a lot of the same question, "what are you doing after you graduate/get married?"  I've been asking that question a lot myself.

Eventually you come to the point in your life where you have to learn that the words "I don't know" are actually ok.  There will come a time, however, when "I don't know" isn't very appealing at all.  That's my situation.

I've always heard stories from older established couples that begin with "back when we first got married and we didn't have anything" and I thought they were cute.  I didn't realize that they really didn't have much of anything at all.  For reals.  I should have paid more attention because I'm exactly at that point now, where we really don't have much of anything. Except blessings.

Just to back up a second, I've always been subject to what others thought I should do with my life.  It's not always a bad thing because people have good advice, but it's been a struggle to create my own expectations and not have to live up to someone else's.  When I was at Elim, I was constantly hearing from adults in the community to "make sure you go get your degree after Elim or you're wasting your life."  Now I'm about to finish my degree in Religion and Philosophy and I'm getting a whole lot of "what in the world are you going to do with that?"  I don't know.    I mean, I do know.  We want to go to Asia to be missionaries, but for some reason not many people are impressed with that.  Which they shouldn't be because I agree with St. Paul when he said that if he was in the business of impressing people, then he wouldn't be a Christian.  I have, however, found myself taking on the disappointment of others and I shouldn't because this is just the beginning.

We may not have some fancy business or engineering degree, but we're doing what we love.  We would like to go back to school (possibly business for Jude and nursing for me) so that we have a skill when we leave the country.  We may not have any idea of where we want to live, but we have applied for a job at the camp that I have worked at for the past three years, BMCR, and we are hopeful.  That will give us 3 more months to pray and work things out.  We may not have any money, but we have been abundantly blessed.  Truth of the matter is that in the beginning we may not have much.  I'm learning that that's ok.

A few weeks ago on Valentines Day there was a presentation at school where couples of different ages gave advice.  I found it cheesy, but there was something that the one lady said which hit home.  She made a statement about how she found herself disappointed at the beginning of her marriage because she didn't have all the furnishings that her parents house did.  Her advice was that we can't expect to have everything right away and we shouldn't let other people create those expectations for us.  This was great advice. Great.

This may just be the beginning, but it's certainly not the end.