"I'm taking your life in a different direction once the school year is over at JCM. You wont be going back next year"
Those were the words that I felt God was etching in my Spirit as I earnestly sought His direction for my life in prayer. I had spend one glorious semester at Jackson College of Ministries in Jackson, Mississippi and I was just grateful to be able to go back after a summer of questions and confusion. That school year changed my life. It was the year that I was giving the opportunity to minister in ways that I had always dreamed of. The book that i had spent years writing finally got printed, I taught Spanish to my fellow students in a classroom, I traveled to churches giving my testimony, singing, and playing the piano, and I went overseas for the first time on a Missions Trip to England. Perhaps I was wrong and God didn't say those things to me. Could all this wonderfulness really be ending in May? I expressed my feelings to so many of my classmates and they simply didn't believe that I would not return the next year.
When May approached there was a shock wave that hit the college campus. JCM was closing due to lack of finances. None of us would be returning the next year. There were many, many tireless efforts that were made to try and keep the campus open but it was to no avail. It was truly and end of an era and even if I wanted to go back to JCM the next year, i had nothing to go back to.
I realized God's words were coming true and so I tried my best to see the silver lining. God had said He was taking my life in another direction and that must be a good thing right? I imagined my ministry becoming more prevalent and possibly meeting "the one", traveling to amazing places and just having a great life back at home in Tucson, Arizona.
It wasn't long after I arrived to the valley of the sun that things began to slowly fall apart. I had so many high expectations but found them all quickly crumbling in front of me. Within two years my brother got married and then divorced, my grandmother died, my uncle died, my aunt found out she had cancer and her husband died of cancer, I came down with pneumonia, found out I had a blood clot, my mother became ill and had to have two surgeries, something alarming happened to someone very close to me, and there were funerals left and right at our church. I felt helpless and so out of place. How could all this be happening after I had spent a year and a half on a cloud at bible college? Was it only in Mississippi that God was hearing my prayers?
Somewhere in the middle of all this tragedy I got it! God didn't lie to me because God CANNOT lie. He didn't say that my life was going to be a bed of roses once I got home and He didn't tell me that i was going to hit some rocky roads either. Had I been told all the pain I would face I would have gone crazy. God doesn't always tell us specifically what lies ahead in our lives. He just wants us know that no matter what He walks beside us.
"He hath made every thing beautiful in His time; also He hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh fro mthe beginning to the end." Ecclesiastes 3:11
Looking back I do not even have a clue how I made it sanely through those rough times. I do know that I am much stronger now and have an appreciation for my relatives and church family. It has brought us so much closer.
I still feel like i am walking in the dark some days but I know that the sun cant always hide. It has to come out eventually. I'm finding my way and finding my place in a church where i felt i didn't really belong anymore. I have established friendships that I had given up on. I have hope now. Its amazing what a little bit of that will do for you.
