Change of Plans

So I'm writing this post to update y'all on what's been going on in my life and my thought process for making such a big decision (and why so late into my college career).

If you know me, you know that I'm a huge, huge, huge planner. That's probably why I love planners. Every hour needs to be planned, things I need to do for the day have to be planned out (regardless of whether or not they actually get accomplished), everything needs a plan and when plans don't play out as I anticipated, things happen. Things like irritation and confusion and the shifting of things in order for things to work out. I'm not crazy, I promise. My point is that it's hard when things don't go as planned. I do believe it's a lesson to be learned ... letting the unplanned-for-kinds-of-things happen, but that's definitely a different story for another day.

So anyway, you can imagine how difficult it was for me to step away from my lifelong plan of becoming a teacher. It was the plan! I felt it as a child that this is what the Lord put on my heart. I wanted to teach students and help them to understand because I knew what it was like to struggle but have an invested teacher help me to understand. A teacher was what I was going to become and I desired to be that exactly (regardless of pay and regardless of how challenging it'd be). So i pursued it. I chased after it. As a child, I did all the things a teacher did. I decorated my room and made posters that looked like those in my teacher's classroom. I pretended to teach students (mainly art). I wanted this.

Fast forward to college and what I wanted to do and pursue stayed the same. I thought, "It's so great to come to college and not have to wrestle with what I want to do because I already know." I was so thankful (I'm still so thankful) that the Lord guided me in this way. However, the last three years have not been easy which is good because I wasn't expecting easy, but easy would have been nice, too. They have been the opposite of easy for me. There have been many trying times, not just because of the work, because it's not about the workload (although the workload is crazy ... haha!) If I'm being honest, I lacked in true understanding in the how of teaching children. Coming to this realization is humbling for me because I don't like admitting that I can't do something. But forreal, this was something I couldn't do because forcing myself to do something that I didn't want to do was not something that I could do. Does that make sense? Haha.

It was evident in my work and reflected in my grades. I no longer wanted this. This is not the same thing I envisioned for myself years ago and the passion is no longer there. I kept up with it for so long because I thought I had no other options. I thought that it was too late to stop here. I was scared of what others, my parents, and Jeffrey might think. I didn't want to throw away all these years because it felt like that was what I was doing. I invested so much into teacher education and I'm not even finishing through with it. I went back and forth so many times thinking about the different paths to take, but here I am ending with a general studies major and a minor in early education.

While it was difficult for me to come to this decision, I can recall not worrying much about it. I didn't have this urge to want to fix everything and didn't find it hard for me to let go of this planned thing in my life. I have found so much peace and joy in this decision and I trust that the Lord can and will use it for His glory. That's the amazing thing. God is not limited by what we can or cannot do, choose, or decide. It's always been about what He can do, who He is, and how He's made known in and through our stories. I trust that this is what He saw and how He's guiding me now will continue to be all for His glory.

There's been crazy support in this decision and so I thank all of y'all. I hope this wasn't super dramatic (haha) but I felt the need to write it down as a way of remembering what God is doing in my life.