Decisions decisions.  There’s a lot of these that will be happening in the near future.  By April 15th, I will know where I am going to school next year, I will know the area in which I will be living, I will know if I have to change healthcare/doctors again, I’ll know if I have to move churches, I will know where I’ll plant my feet for the next five years.  Regardless of where I end up or what I end up doing, it’s going to be a change.  I know that.  Grad school is a whole different beast from undergrad.  But going there brings more than just school changes.

A new church, new friends, a new state, a new city, a new mass transit system (or lack thereof), a new life.

I’m becoming more and more accustomed to the idea that it’s going to be a hard move, wherever I go.  I’m so rooted in my church that it’s going to be hard to leave.  To leave the friends and mentors that I have there, to leave the choir and praise team, the college ministry…it’s going to be hard.  I’m so involved in my community at school that it’s going to be difficult to leave.  To leave friends and mentors there, to leave the place I’ve called home for four years, to leave behind my comfort and what I know…it’s going to be difficult.  I know, though that this is a good thing.  For it to be hard to leave, I have to have really invested in where I was.

I knew four years ago when I stepped onto Gordon’s campus, that that was where I was supposed to be.  I didn’t know why, but in hindsight, I see that I was just where he wanted me to be.  Giving my testimony to my church was a step I wouldn’t have taken somewhere else.  That opened doors to share my testimony on campus, too, where people had seen me live my life a certain way for three years, and now got to understand why.  I’ve never felt so accepted and at home as I did immediately following that experience.  Since then, it’s opened so many conversations with people – with friends and with those I barely knew.  But God has worked through all of it.  Joining the choir was the first step to opening up to people outside of my immediate group of friends, and I’ve been so blessed there.  Joining the college ministry was an extension of wanting to be involved at church but more with people my own age.  I’ve been truly blessed there as well.  Tutoring in the chemistry department has brought me to my current career path, and allowed me to serve in ways I never thought I could.  Going to Poland six years ago is allowing me to branch out and travel to China this summer.

God has been shaping and molding me to the woman he wants me to be over these years, in more ways that I yet know.  He has been at work in my life and will continue to be at work as I move on in my academic career.  I have loved of my college years and have been challenged, stretched, grown, loved, pushed away, broken down, picked back up, and pushed forward.  I am now looking forward to whatever God has for me next.

I do know one thing:  God will be with me wherever I go, and wherever I go God will be with me.