OK, I'm feeling a sense of urgency to finish this so I think I'll type my little heart out today and you can read it at your leisure.
So, I'm a senior- finally. It was my 6th year in college and I finally had it all together and was going to graduate. Well, after I completed about 25 hours or so and a senior recital. So as I'm on my merry little way determined to graduate, and to do it single, I had a class with someone all of you know- Travis. I had only dated one guy seriously the whole time I was in college and that was the year before. The four years prior to that I was single. I had crushes and was asked out, etc. But I was so terrified of relationships that if I actually made it to the date without canceling then I'd usually freak myself out enough to not do it again. I was also spending a lot of time with the Lord and finding out who I was. There were several times that I set a specific period of time in which I commited to not date. There were eye-rolls and objections of "again!?!" from those close to me but they had no idea where I was coming from. People (friends, professors) told me to "just get married" but seriously, why would I want to step into that hell again? I hadn't ever seen a godly marriage model so I didn't even know why people bothered to get married. I think I wanted to get married someday but I begged God on a regular basis to not let me marry the wrong guy. It was a very, very lonely time in my life.
But back to Travis. I put off one specific class for my entire college career because I didn't really want to take it but it was required. And they only offered it once- in the fall- at 7:30 am- ugh. I hated 7:30 classes and only took them if I had to. Composition and Arranging- seriously, who wants to do that at 7:30 am? But surprise, surprise, who should be in my class but Travis. We'd had classes together before and we usually sat next to each other (except for one semester when I had a boyfriend and he had a crush on someone else) but I knew that this class wasn't required for his major. He chalked his taking the class to his love for writing, which is true, but that wasn't his only motive. I didn't realize that I'd told him the previous spring that I'd be taking C & A in the fall. Which is just one small thing in the long list of things that I'd forget that I'd told him. So he and I started spending time together because neither of us had a class the next period but I had to go to chapel so we'd usually have breakfast together in the cafe and talk about life, relationships and well, do college students talk about anything else? During one conversation I told him he needed to strap on a parachute and just jump out of the plane, of course I didn't really know *I* was the object of his affection. Funny.
He and I kept running into each other more and more often, especially in the MIDI lab. I'm not sure why we called it that but it's where we wrote music for our class assignments. I ran into him there so often that I started thinking we were being set up by God not realizing that I would tell him during the day when I was going. I don't think I found that out until after we were married. Anyway, he *finally* asked me out after about two months of *accidentally* running into each other. We started dating but really, we were just in different spots in our lives. He wanted to not date anyone unless he was sure that he could marry her (me). I wanted to date casually and wasn't ready to settle down. I was laid back, he was uptight. And he was constantly picking stuff off of my clothes- gaaa! So we were off to a rocky start.
For years I had been praying about what to do after I graduated and I was rapidly approaching decision time. My plan was- barring hearing something specific from God- that I would take Amanda on a trip across the country and then I'd start applying to graduate schools. But one day I was praying while I was laying on my bed and I was looking out the window. It was an amazing winter day, the sky was clear and the temperature was mild- and God spoke. Finally, after all the years of college and not knowing exactly why I was doing what I was doing or how I was going to get from where I was to the dreams God was giving me He spoke. And He told me to be a minister of music & to do it by myself. And I said OK. I didn't want to be a minister of music before but it didn't matter because God said do it so I set about trying to get a job. I talked to the professor in the placement office and started working on my resume. And I broke up with Travis. I was focused, determined and goal oriented. I wasn't going to let anything stop me from doing what God called me to do. People were expendable. I didn't go to college to get married I went to college to change my life.
I was still working on getting everything together to send to churches and while I was in the shower one day my Mom knocked on the door and said, "Amy, there's a pastor on the phone for you". Instead of asking to call him back I just jumped out of the shower, threw on a towel and had my first interview to be a music pastor. I was upfront with him about being divorced and having a child and he said, "I'm not concerned about that I just want the person that God wants here". If only he meant that as much as he thought he did.
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