tl;dr

For about a week or so, I’ve had an uneasy feeling. Something like constantly having a cloud above my head. I couldn’t shake it. Lately I’ve felt as if the weeks have been flying by without me really accomplishing anything. It’s like my life is passing me by and I really have no say in the matter at all. This is probably the first time that I’ve felt as if I’m running on empty. But there was more too. There’s this sense of dissatisfaction.

Last night at fellowship, it finally hit me. As everyone else declared, “It is well with my soul,” I couldn’t help but feel as if those words were far from being true in my heart. For the first time in a few weeks, I could finally put my finger on this negative mood that seems to have been around for too long. For the first time, I finally admitted to myself that I was upset—maybe even angry—at God.

It started about three weeks ago, around the time of my birthday. The past few years haven’t held pleasant birthday memories, so I tried to make it like any other day. It’s stupid, but I hoped that if no one knew it was my birthday, the day would go by as if it weren’t. The day would maybe not be so bad.

But it turns out (obviously) that life doesn’t quite work that way. And people did find out about my birthday. A couple days after my birthday, I found out one of my high school classmates had passed away… a couple days before. We weren’t best friends or anything like that. We never really even hung out outside of school. But we survived Latin IV together. There was at least a small sense of camaraderie.

Needless to say, that news about my classmate hit me. It wasn’t crushing or anything, but it did make me start to doubt. I started asking God questions. I asked Him why it happened. When I saw Joe’s (my classmate) face without that unfailing grin, I asked again. I don’t know how it happened. I only know that something like this shouldn’t happen to someone like Joe. And so, after spending a good week questioning God, I finally stopped talking to him. I was like a pouty child with her arms crossed and back turned.

Since then, I think I’ve found myself spiraling deeper and deeper into discontentment. Suddenly life is unfulfilling. God’ word is dry and empty now. People are more of a nuisance and a disappointment than anything else.

Late last spring, it was easy to say that I could trust God with my future. It was easy to say that I joyfully accept His will. It was all so easy before I came to Rutgers. I can’t help but feel as if it should have been the other way around. That I should have been angry then and excited about the opportunities now.

One of my biggest problems has always been with expectations, though. Expectations are probably the biggest part of what went wrong. I expected God to open certain doors in certain ways. I kept asking for this and that. I kept looking in all the wrong places. God never gave me those opportunities that I asked for. And I wasted all the opportunities He did give me.

Yet even through all this negativity, I think God is teaching me. I’m not quite sure how these feelings and events relate to the lesson, but recently I feel as if God is challenging me to redefine love in my life.

But in a sense, I’ve come full circle. I’ve realized—or rather, remembered—that God brought me here for higher knowledge in life than what they teach in the classrooms. I’ve realized that this really just is a step towards becoming a missionary. In certain ways, being at a comfortable, rich (compared to the rest of the world) university is much harder than living in a third world country. For me, at least. Since coming here, I’ve found it harder to love, harder to be humble, harder to be like Christ. I’ve learned that until I can live in a manner that is worthy of the calling we have in Christ Jesus while I’m here at Rutgers, I am not ready to be a missionary. Missions is for everywhere. It is for where you are, not just where you know or hope you will one day be. Missions is for where you feel out of place, not just where you want to be and where you feel at home.