She Shoots, She Scores

Things are looking up. I got a job at Old World Cafe because my friend Kate, who already works there, recommended me. I went in this week, and while I was still filling out the application the owner came over, introduced herself, and hired me. I start tomorrow, and it should be a full time job.

It's a funny world, how things come together like that.

Yes, things are looking up. College starts in a couple weeks. I—the girl who has been so against traditional education and scorned the need of a degree since I want to be a writer—decided to join LUO's psychology and crisis counseling program. I'm only taking 6 credits this semester so I'll have time to work as much as possible. Thankfully, I found out just last week that Liberty is accepting all 18 of my SBI credits, so even though I'm slowing down this semester, and may even take this coming semester off for a missions opportunity, I'll still graduate age-appropriately with a B.S. in 2015. Thanks, Mom, for starting my schooling a year early so I can wander around the world and figure out who I am in between academic pursuits.

I really do appreciate having some direction in life. From the outside, it makes me look like a nice, stable person. I have a job, a major, and plenty of future plans, just like I should. She shoots, she scores. It's all solid stuff.

Or so they tell me.

Things are looking up, but I'm having difficulty getting excited about it. Am I magnanimously appreciative? Yes, I am. But I'm wary about being happy about those things. They are nothing but mist, and they could be taken away from me at any dang time. With or without a job, with or without a college degree, I'm still a fallen human whose entire past and future hinges on grace.

Nothing stands between a Luxemburg millionaire and a slum dog but the breath of God. I've landed somewhere between the two, but my security is no different. One moment you can have everything, and the next you can have nothing.

God is sovereign over it all, and He does whatever He pleases.

If my joy is in the things that are taken from me, then I will lose my joy along with my things. More poignantly, if my joy is in God as a giver of good things, and not as a giver of what is best (coming from the standpoint that what is best is often something that hurts like hell), then I will still lose my joy.

I'm so tired of placing my joy in the wrong objects. I'm so tired of experiencing emotional highs and then realizing it's a transient, situational kind of happiness that is worth...nothing.

I want solid joy.

Yes, I do know where to find it.

It's not in a full time job, college, travel, or even missions.

It's by knowing nothing but Jesus Christ and him crucified. And trusting that even though it feels like life is meaningless and dark, directionless and full of pain, it's actually bursting with meaning and direction, and light and healing will come. 

If I correctly remember a sermon from a couple years ago, good 'ole Piper says if you make Christ the bottom of your joy, then you can kind of build up from there and dare to find some happiness in things and situations and people. Because they are meant to be enjoyed. They really are.

However, we must hold these things with open hands, fingers spread, so that we don't lose joy if God takes them away.

Heads up, He probably will. Because God wants the weak, and God wants the foolish.

Just to clarify, the weak and the foolish are the people who have nothing.