I'm Here for the Story

As many of you have probably figured by now, I’ve been really struggling with school. My heart hasn’t been in it, and I haven’t felt like I’ve been getting anything out of it. I’ve believed, for quite a while now, that I probably wouldn’t go for my PhD like I had originally planned. Not only that, I had a feeling the program I was in wasn’t really where I was supposed to be. It wasn’t like there was any other calling that I was ignoring; I had no idea what else I would do. So I was just waiting for a lightning bolt to come down from heaven and tell me what to do.

Meanwhile, I have been pursuing an ever deeper relationship with God. I’ve been undergoing some pretty intense sanctification this year as He has none too gently made me aware of my idols, and torn them down. I could go in to several, but I’m going to focus on two.

The first is control. I lust after control like no other. I will do just about anything to create a life that at least seems to be under my control. Waiting on God’s timing to show me what I ought to do - trusting in HIS timeline rather than mine - was a huge learning process. I kept praying, “I’ll do what you want me to do, God, BUT JUST HURRY UP AND SHOW ME WHAT THAT IS ALREADY!!”

To which God responded with a smile, “Not yet, Lauren. Trust me and wait.”

I of course didn’t like that very much. But I understood. I do need to learn to trust God. He has never, and will never let me down, but it’s sure easy to forget that when I’m longing for a checklist that will get me where I want to go.

The second idol is picture-perfection. I want everything to go according to Plan A all the time. I was the kid that measured out exactly a tablespoon of honey to put on my bread, not for any dietary reasons, but because that’s what the label said. I didn’t think serving sizes were guidelines; I thought they were hard-and-fast rules, and how dare everybody break them? I thought to myself (at approximately age seven), “When I have a family, we’ll always have the exact right amount of food!” I want to finish everything I start, follow instructions to the letter, do everything the conventional way, get married and have two-and-a-half children that I will drive to soccer three days a week.

My education, throughout my whole life, has been a prime example of something that did NOT go according to the picture-perfect idol in my head. I was unconventionally home schooled until third grade, when I started going to a private school of literally 27 students that to this day, no one I’ve met has ever heard of. I went there through seventh grade, and then started public school in eighth grade. From there, it was “normal” inasmuch as such a thing exists, but I still regret so many of the opportunities I missed, the people I did or didn’t make friends with.

Then I went to college. Then I changed schools after my second year. Then I changed majors. Twice. Then I joined a sorority as a junior (though a fourth-year, I considered myself in “junior year #2” since I would need a fifth year after all those fresh starts). As a result, I was at least three years older than everyone in my pledge class, and this severely irked my sense of right and wrong in the world. I wasn’t the picture-perfect start-to-finish sorority girl that they would all be, and there was nothing I could do about that.

Damn.

Then, last June, after being accepted into UW’s graduate program, I graduated with my Bachelor of Science, at long last, ready to start a new program and do it “right”: start-to-finish, with no more of these winding road shenanigans.

But, after hardly a week of reading academic articles about soil profiles, I realized I had no passion for what I had started. I told myself I’d stick it out, I’d at least give it a try. But I was miserable. After coming down with a mild case of the stomach flu that lasted over two weeks (I think I lost 2-3kg!) one professor told me that grad school takes a lot of adjusting, and “you never really go off the clock during the quarter.” I’m just not okay with that job description, unless we’re talking about motherhood. If it was something I was incredibly passionate about (kids would fall under that category!) it wouldn’t be so bad, but given that all the homework just felt like busywork, I really wasn’t okay with that.

So, I waited some more. I prayed for God to show me something else to do.

One night, after an almost-tearful conversation with my mom in which I ranted about how I loved everything in my life but school, we brainstormed the what-ifs. What if I DID drop out? What could I do then? What sort of a job could I find?

“I really like my TA job,” I told her. The lightning bolt had struck. “It’s the one thing I actually like about school.”

We started talking about looking for tutoring jobs, and pretty soon the seed exploded into a tree. I looked in to education programs, seeing if it was at all realistic. I found a K-8 certificate program that looked both realistic and attractive: five quarters to completion, spring of one year through spring the next. I would apply by December 1st of this year, and start next spring.

I had pretty much decided to do it, but an important question remained. What onearth am I going to do with myself until then? The point remains that I am miserable where I am. It came down to this: I could either drop out after this quarter, and brave the job market, or I could stay in school for one more quarter and take classes I don’t care about, while receiving student loans (albeit a liability!) that I could depend on.

I prayed A LOT about this piece of the decision. I weighed pros and cons, I thought and prayed, and thought and prayed some more. Then, when talking it over with Sarah, I remembered something I heard somewhere before - perhaps in a sermon, perhaps a conversation: given two options, if both could be glorifying to God, choose the one that is the bigger leap of faith.

I’m not even sure staying would be glorifying to God, given how bitter and jaded I’ve become about it. But even if it was, I realized that the only reason I had to stay was the money. Once I realized that, it was obvious: finding a new job and giving up the security of those loans was by far a bigger leap of faith.

I prayed more for a couple more days. Last night, I talked over this new thought with my mom (who is wonderful and supportive and quite possibly my best friend) and she agreed. It was time for me to move on.

And that is exactly what I decided to do. I’m not “giving up” on grad school. I know I’m smart and capable enough to go for my PhD. The issue is that I don’t want to. I think, really, the only reason I wanted that degree in the first place was so I could boast that I was Lauren C, PhD. That reason is all pride - there’s no glory for God in that motivation. I need to do something else, something I love and that will increase my joy in doing God’s will.

So, I’m moving on. Starting the program wasn’t a bad choice, or a failure. It was a necessary step: I was appointed to the TA position because of starting this program, and that wouldn’t have happened if I had never started grad school. But now that I have realized that I like teaching, it is time to pursue that, and it is no longer time to work towards my master’s degree. It’s not giving up, it’s moving on.

Last night, after I got off the phone with my mom, I felt a bit like I was about to jump off a cliff with no bungee cord, trusting that God would provide a parachute. I turned to my Bible, particularly this passage:

“For everything there is a season, and a time for every after under heaven:
a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planet;
a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up’
a time to weep, and a time to laugh
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silent, and a time to speak;
a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for way, and a time for peace.
What gain has the worker from his toil? I have seen the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.  I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live; also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all this toil—this is Gods’ gift to man.
I perceived that whatever God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken away from it. God has done is, so that people fear before him. That which is, already has been; that which is to be, already has been; and God seeks what has been driven away.”
—Ecclesiastes 3:1-15

It is now a time for me to let go, a time to move on. A time to TRUST GOD.

Funny enough, a paper I had to read in the class that I am the most miserable in made me realize this. The paper included the following diagram:

(Well, that’s my hand-drawn re-creation of it on the inside of a coffee cup sleeve - how very Seattle of me!)

The path on the left represents our idea of how research is supposed to go. The path of the right is how it actually goes. It’s meant to refer to the process of writing a thesis, but I think this applies to life in general. My education as a whole has definitely looked more like Exhibit B, and I’ve been greatly annoyed that it hasn’t looked like Exhibit A.

But, it seems God’s plan is to send me to point C. Or D, or E, or W, or whatever. Either way, I need to trust him, and keep on walking down that dizzying path. It’s not giving up. It’s moving on.

I’m ready for the free fall and the rush of the wind in my hair.