Thinking about the Future

With the sudden realization of "Oh snap! I'm going to be a real adult in 19 months!" suddenly coming upon me, I've been thinking about the future lately. In 19 months I'll be out in the real world and I'm going to have to get a real job, real housing, and start paying my real student loans. My little safe haven of Harding will be gone and I'll be out in the world beyond Searcy, Arkansas. Again I say to you, "Oh snap!"

Now, of course this is just an over-reaction. Obviously, I have plenty of time until May 2009. But this is the first time that this graduation date has come into the real foreseeable future. Of course, this is much too far away to make any sort of plans. It's too far away to even think what I want to be doing. A million things could come up between now and then and could change my direction entirely (not to mention the fact that Jesus could come back......I mean, literally anything could happen). I see in front of me hundreds of different opportunities that could possibly arise and hundreds of different directions that my life could take.

Still, with a combination of fun, excitement, and unbelievable fear, I still catch myself glimpsing about what could happen past that May 2009 date. Career wise, my options that seem the most viable to me as of now (key phrase: as of now) are either going to Grad school, getting a youth ministry job, or doing mission work. Other things could definitely pop up, but those are the ones I dream about the most. I would be happy with any of those options, though perhaps not really thrilled about the idea of Grad School so soon after under-grad.

Anyways, I bring this up to talk about a fun conversation my good friend Coleman and I had tonight. Coleman and I have been friends since early freshman year, and we've been ministry partners in various things, such as jail ministry, a Nicaragua mission trip, and our big plans for this year (that's for another blog). Anyways, we've always worked well together, and we kind of balance each other out. He's very realistic, pragmatic, and practical, while I can be idealistic, emotional, and unrealistically optimistic (sorry if there's too many "-ics" in there). Coleman has always dreamed of moving up north to a city like Seattle, be a history teacher, and starting a church plant. My dreams usually tended to be something like stay south around some place like Nashville, get a good youth ministry job, and shack up there. So, I guess we always figured our ministry partnership would be over after college. However, today we finally had the conversation of, "What if we could still work together in some way using some combination of those dreams?" We have no idea how this would take place and in what form it could take, but it was fun coming up with possible hypothetical situations of how we could minister to any number of cities (we came up with tons: Seattle, Portland, St. Paul, San Francisco). It's all just guesses and it's all totally hypothetical, but it's fun and exciting to think of what God could do through us. The chances of any of this happening is probably very low and it would probably be tough to find a situation where both of us could be in the same city. But hey, it's fun to dream, and you never know what God is going to do.
I sometimes get so frustrated when people tell me that "College is the best time of your life." I mean, I love college and I'm going to soak everything out of it and enjoy it as much as I can while I'm here. But, I'm also really excited about what God has planned for me next. I believe and I hope that there are many amazing things to come. It's scary, but bring it on. Future, let's see what you have in store.