On the Finish Line

Here I am, almost done with college. I started writing this blog as a homeschool girl, trying to spread her wings, learning to live. Now that identity that I've claimed for so long, a girl schooled at home, is about to disappear forever as I submit the very last assignment of my very last college course.

Can you remember a milestone like this in your own life? Maybe when you felt like you were jumping off a cliff into nothing?

I love making plans and goals, dreaming about the future, imagining possibilities for the years to come. I expect to travel overseas and attend Bible school next spring, but beyond that it's nothing but a dense fog. Career, home, relationships, ministry...I feel as if I've got my whole life ahead of me, but I can't possibly see beyond the next few months.

But isn't that how it's supposed to be?

God never promised us a road map. Sometimes the Bible makes it sound that way, when it's talking about God ordaining our steps, etc. But when David wrote about His Word being "a lamp to my feet and a light for my path," he wasn't talking about an industrial-strength flood light that could light up a small country. He was thinking more along the lines of a tiny oil lamp, only capable of letting out a shallow ring of light. Again, he says, "You enlarge my steps under me,/And my feet have not slipped." God didn't level the mountains for miles around to make David's walk easy and self-explanatory; He enlarged the ground under David's feet step by step, even as he was walking. God didn't give the psalmist a grand plan for the future. He helped him a little bit at a time.

So that is where I am right now. On the brink, on the "finish line" of college and the beginning of a stage that could truly be called adulthood. Scary thought. But I am not alone. Though the mist swirls thick and white up ahead, though I don't know what is lurking beyond the next bend, though the future looks like a big ball of tangled threads with no form or purpose...I've got to trust my Lord. Day. By. Day. Moment. By. Moment. Only then will the future become clear. 

Because this is not the finish line. This is only the beginning.

Cloud waves lap at Lingmell, a photo by walkinguphills on Flickr.