Changing Seasons and Unanswered Questions

"Lord you’ve been faithful to plant the seeds
And you will be faithful to always send your rain

Though the seasons change
Your love remains
Your love remains." 

- Seasons Change by United Pursuit

Most things—good and bad, difficult and beautiful, hard and gentle, complicated and simple—must come to an end. In truth, most seasons of life or weather or beauty pass as quickly as the pause in between two breaths or as ocean mist spraying across your face, and our time on earth is the smallest particle within the ephemeral mist of eternity.

In the moment it never feels like this. When you’re sweating or crying or working or bleeding or laughing till your stomach aches surrounded by people you deeply love—time feels perfectly, wholly eternal, and it is often in the moments of intense joy or struggle that you can’t imagine yourself anywhere but the present moment.

But all vapors must dissipate, and so does time.

This season of my life is dwindling down, and I feel it so acutely, so painfully, so sharply. I love my community, (even when it is messy and not easy), I love my friends new and old (even when navigating close relationships is hard), and I love studying (evening on the late nights of homework). I have never really considered myself much of a “comfort-seeking” person or homebody, but as I prepare to graduate and leave the life and community I have known so well and so intimately for four full years, I am filled with sadness. I have wept more in the last month or so than I have in a while. There is so much beauty and love around me, and the painful prospect of goodbye is hard to swallow. Even more so, the blank canvas of my post-graduate life is utterly terrifying.

I am scared, friends.

When the answer to the persistently-asked question what are Your plans for my life, Lord? remains absent, it is frightening and anxiety-causing. My life is open and blank and plan-less—and this uncertainty feels so unconquerable, so significant, so big.

In the quiet of the long, dark night, I find myself praying into the unfathomable, empty space: Where do I go? What do I do? How do I serve you, Lord? Am I to be a missionary or a student or a teacher or a writer or supervisor or a minister for Your kingdom?

I thought, like many perhaps do, I’d have a definite, hard, clear, handwriting-on-the-wall answer by this point in time.

But I don’t.

Graduation is eleven short days away, and I have only the prayers and the encouragement of those who love me, and the wide, open space that is His will for my life. It is hard to live in this space, this tension, and this uncertainty, friends. It feels vulnerable. People constantly asking for your plans—and all you can give is a small, sheepish grin and an indefinite answer. But I have to continue on, continue seeking and praying and breathing into the pain of the uncertainty and trust that He has something, so goodness waiting in my future.

I don’t doubt Him or His plans or His beautiful intentions for this little life of mine. He has delivered and worked and love before in times more daunting and difficult than this one, and I know He will again. His faithfulness absolutely astounds me, and in the sadness of leaving my current life and seeking a new one, I am tethering myself against Him. He is my rock, my constant.

Because I know, in His strange, incomprehensible, splendid ways, He will lead me to there—wherever there may be.

And that is a gift worth waiting on.