How'd I Get Here?
Once someone told me that there are two paths in life, the one God has immaculately designed for us to walk in and the other one we forge as we endorse our own will.
Although the former is ideal, in our imperfection, we are unable to keep in step. Instead, we all walk the one we choose. It detours from the straight and immaculate path God had for us, its got more bumps, it certainly takes longer. However, that someone also told me that on the path we choose, at any point we can turn and find God standing there beside us, willing to guide us back to the path He originally destined for us.
What a beautiful picture of God’s pursuant perseverance that person depicted for me. Many of the side-steps on my way to getting here were me trying to forge my own path and God graciously redirecting me back. I just couldn’t quite see it then. Gosh, am I grateful now.
Eight Years ago, I was preparing for my final year of doing something I loved.
Seven years ago, timing was closing in and I felt pressed to make a decision, choose a path, recognize my calling, but I didn’t have a clue as to what it would be.
Five years ago, I left my first job. I proposed an area of study.
Three years ago, I was 1,300 miles from home.
Two years ago, I was in a van with ten people I hardly knew on our way from a four-square-mile town in Iowa no had heard of to Muskegon.
The main strand that wove all these years together? Water.
Those years took me from a passion for swimming, to working in aquatics, to being granted academic approval to study water management, to doing my thesis research on coral reefs, to connecting intimately with Jesus on a beach in my year of service. To me at the time, those were all isolated choices. Truthfully, many choices I made without God's guidance. Yet, all of that to find this beautiful organization, Water at Work, connecting the dots between a passion for water and a passion for Jesus in a wonderfully wrapped envelope of service. Three pillars that have been a foundation for much of my life.
I couldn’t see those connections before I reached them, but now I realize how foolish it was to stress about figuring it all out nearly ten years ago when I can trust a God that had it worked out before my first breath. He knew what my gifts, talents, time, failures, mis-steps, and lessons would be used for. He knew how He would direct me back.
I am incredibly grateful this is where He has me now, serving here as Water@Work's new Donor Relations Manager and continually being used as a vessel for His good purpose.