where i want to be.

I want to get more comfortable being uncomfortable. I want to get more confident being uncertain. I don't want to shrink back just because something isn't easy. I want to push back, and make more room in the area between I can't and I can. Maybe that spot is called I will.  -Kristin Armstrong

Except, I would change the ending to read, "Maybe that spot is called faith." Because the last four weeks has shown me, that despite all that God has taught me in the last year, I still feel uncomfortable with a lot of things. I still feel very uncertain about "my future" and "the direction of my life" and "God's specific vocational calling" for me... I still tend to shrink back from hard things (perhaps less than I used to, but I still prefer to shrink...) There are still a plethora of things that intimidate and scare me... as well as countless areas of my life where God is flashing his pruning shears.

And that's okay. That's where faith grows. Faith grows in the rub between where we are and where God wants us. Between how we are and who we were created to be. The fact that I can't answer the most frequently asked question since I returned ("What are you going to do when you return in December?") freaks me out.

This past Sunday at our college big group, Pastor Doug stated that, "When facing trials in this life we must not avoid the sanctification God wants to bring through them." And I'd just like to chime in and add that waiting is a trial. (In the words of The Karate Kid, "Being still and doing nothing are two very different things.") As much as waiting on the Lord and learning to hear His voice through the chaos and distraction of life is a discipline, it is also a huge trial... waiting is a test. A test of our faithfulness in face of the unknown... to see if we will be steadfast: "loyal under stress" (definition Doug's).

There are dozens of unknowns in my life right now... big unknowns. Scary unknowns. And to look at them daily and dwell on them would send me cowering under my covers catatonic. So instead of that (because really, that's no viable option at all), I am trying to remind myself of the truth. And my Dad, being the good Dad that He is, gave me this timely reminder in small group from James 1:

2 Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, 3 because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. 4 Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.

These verses don't say that I should pray to be mature and complete and then whine when it's time to pay the piper (with the price tag reading: trials)... but rather, that I should consider it pure joy because the waiting and the faithing is producing something of value in my life: maturity and completeness. I'm not completely there yet, but it is where I want to be moving towards.