Existential crisis. Quarter-life crisis. Not wanting to be here, but not knowing where there should be. The restlessness is relentless. When will you ever be ready? There’s so many things you want to do, learn, explore, become… so many possibilities, but you can’t screw up the choice, because once you enter a door, you can’t go back. It’s paralyzing. Tick tock.
Now that you’re past twenty, you’d think you’d have it figured out. You pray to God, even telling Him that at this point, you just want to be told what to do so that you can move forward, without falling out of that obscure yet sacred sweet spot which is the center of His will. One step away from it and BAM! The favor of heaven shuts its gates on you. You wait for an answer, and wait some more, except there’s no burning bush, no dream, and no clues. Just your anxious self, falling into a big black stagnant hole. You feel like a rotting potato. No, you feel like a useless, rotting potato whom God doesn’t even want to talk to.
That was my young adult frame of mind, spanning pre- and post-university years, after which it reluctantly pretended to be a grown up. I did well in school, ended up practicing what I studied, but eventually found myself back where I started: lost. To begin with, I chose interior design because it was time for college. If I had to study, it would be in some sort of design, and my mom encouraged me towards this one. Conviction? Ha. Halfway through university, I wanted to study architecture abroad, so that the stage would be set for a future in international commercial design. Well, that didn’t work out, and restlessness followed like a shadow, even if the creative freedom at work was pretty good.
The hardest part wasn’t being stuck in my hometown. The worst part was finding myself where I set out to be, yet over time, realizing that it’s just another middle of nowhere. The more I practiced, the less convinced I was about designing for the rest of my life. What made me finally change directions were two things: it was time to stop paying a client to work for them (I’m many shades of insane), and a passion for the provenance of food and healthy living (which, incubated in a family reunion, became a decision to educate myself in farming). I was still mad at God, for still not communicating His will in any way, but hey, I wasn’t going to become a drug lord. It was uncomfortable not having a clearly defined goal, only an open-ended future. There was also a question at the back of my mind: “God, if I can know You, may I?”
Then plans changed quickly. Farming had to be put on hold, so I looked for classes and internships in carpentry and design when I flew to the USA. By the end of a two-week vacation in New York, a root canal happened, which changed plans of going to the West Coast. A friend encouraged me to look for work in New York and offered a place to stay while I was job hunting. My parents advised, “If you’re going to be there, try looking for a job. Be open and pray. It doesn’t have to be in New York, and it doesn’t have to be in design.” I ended up splitting rent and becoming roommates with my friend while hunting for jobs and an apartment. It was nearly impossible to land a design job, so I worked as a sales associate in one of my happy brands, while looking for another means to pay rent. Along the way, I got sick, heartbroken, extremely exhausted, and broke. I made friends, lived from a luggage, found jobs and apartments through Craiglist (you can find anything there), attended a cousin’s graduation, developed a “don’t talk to me” subway face, experienced autumn for the first time, watched Idina Menzel in If Then, and acquainted myself with three boroughs after moving twice in one year. I haven’t seen my family in ages, and by family, that includes my best and closest friends at home, which gets to me at times. But it’s part of it. I’ve been on my third job for several months now, working at an architecture firm that specializes in retail design. Now, fall is here again.
God brought me to a crazy, unfamiliar city, where my lack of preparedness and foreign background made me vulnerable. I struggled with hopelessness, because all my prior experience meant nothing. All I had was a luggage of summer clothes, and myself. Then a whirlwind of events, which started off with the root canal, then a cancelled flight, needing a job, needing an apartment urgently, roommate situations that kept falling through, needing a second job, closed doors, scary bosses and then some, happened one after another. Misery could have swallowed me whole, except that God spoke through His Word to put my hope in Him, that I would yet praise Him. He made it happen this way, in weakness, surprise, and vulnerability, so that I would know that it could only be Him. Not me or any illusion of independence or personal greatness. Not thorough planning or ability or connections. But Him. In time, I learned to enjoy the ride, bumpy as it may be, and laugh even in the thick of it, because God was there, laughing with me.
When I think back on how I ended up here, it isn’t a story of how a fearful person became brave, and managed to unstuck herself from a miserable oblivion by growing some balls and going YOLO (despicable phrase). This isn’t about how God revealed His specific will for me, because that didn’t happen. If He wanted to get specific, He could. He’s God and does whatever He wants. But for people like me, who thought she had to figure out the will of God, my attempt to do so turned out to be a paralyzing mask for cowardice.
If I had to write every story of the story so far (toilet disaster stories in between, because that’s my kind of luck), it would fill the pages of a book. There are days when I wonder what’s next, because I know this isn’t it. This isn’t where I’m going to be for the rest of my life. I want to study again, but, like my freshman days, I don’t know what to take yet. It’s ridiculous. But this time, I no longer experience the turmoil within a sad little potato. I’m free. Even if there are meh seasons, it’s no longer in the black hole.
The next place, or even tomorrow, may be good or bad or ho-hum. A random person may give me flowers, or a bird may shit on my head. The point isn’t for God to take me from one good place to the next, until I’m a billionaire CEO famous architect philanthropist. The best part isn’t getting the job my younger self wanted (it gets old), or even living in New York (definitely gets old, and makes you older faster), or whatever credential this may head towards. The best part is God Himself, to experience Him, and walk beneath the falling leaves of red, orange, and gold, with the Creator of them all. He promises to take us to the Promised Land, while it is Him, all along.
*
Image Attribution: “Life Book 2014 Week Six, exercise 2” by Hélène Villeneuve is licensed under (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
