The transition time from one semester to another is an interesting stage full of nostalgia, yet ripe with the tidings of opportunity. This semester as I prepare myself for my internship, I’m trying to also appreciate the days between now and then. Even though I have an adventure to look forward to, I don’t want to waste away the days by living ahead of myself. I am doing what I can to live in “the now,” but it’s funny that when you look around, it seems like everyone is living for the future. Theatre/philosophy nerds like me might say it’s like Beckett’s Waiting For Gadot. We all seem to be waiting on something, though some of us don’t even know what that may be.
All around me, people are advancing in life and creating these vast futures for themselves that look nothing like my own. Does that bother me? Not necessarily, but while I’ve been attempting a steady pace to make sure the minutes don’t escape me, I’m noticing how everyone else seems to be running a marathon. It’s like one of Jason Bateman’s movie characters speculates, “running around, always rushed, always late. I guess that’s why they call it the human race.”
Don’t get me wrong. I love my life, and I love where I am in life. The days might seem mundane, full of classes and meetings and the occasional migraine, and they are. But God is preparing me for a future that is better than I could ask for or imagine. I’m a single college student with a full course load, a job that I love, and a campus community that I love even more. It may sound cliche, but now is a time in life where I have very few attachments. I’m pursuing my calling in life, a calling that makes me feel more alive than a boy or a mansion or a picket fence ever could. Others my age and generation running this vast human race are getting married, settling down, preparing for careers or grad school or life in general. And I’m darn beaming proud of all of them and they’re going to be great wives, husbands, professionals, CEOs, scientists, ministers, teachers, or whatever the case may be.
In my case, it has really been dawning on me how “abnormal” my dream for my life is. Yes, I’d love to get married someday. I’d love to be a mother and wife, and I know somewhere deep within me is the capability to do so; I really hope sometime the opportunity presents itself. But honestly, I’m ready to adventure. I want to go to places I’ve never been and take in the beauty of all that is this world and share the hope that I have and just….live. It’s not that I don’t want a house or a dog or a 2 door garage or a husband to go with it, but in so many ways my call to the mission field is also a call to forsake the American dream. I am not on the path of the Pinterest worthy life. I’m pursuing a lifestyle that is calling me to surrender comfort and routine, to surrender a sense of normalcy.
I’m starting to realize that not every college kid takes 6 weeks of their summer to go to Asia. I’m realizing that what I’m doing is not typical. And in some ways it stings a little and I feel like I’m walking while everyone else is running, or that I’m running the opposite direction. In other ways it is freeing and fantastic and I can’t wait to venture into the great unknown with just God and my not-so-American dreams.
Rev. Bekah Rhea, MDiv. 