I'm On My Way

Well, it is official. Next year, I am going to Costa Rica. After much prayer (and prayers from others) God has finally shown me, out of all the other projects, where to go. And it feels good to finally know I'm on my way.

Now comes filling out applications and praying that I get accepted into the college I want. I haven't heard back from any of them yet, unfortunately, but I guess it takes faith to know that God will put me in the right place.

I guess that is the defining thing in my life right now: faith. Recently I've discovered that faith takes a lot of sacrifice. While praying about whether I was supposed to go with Score International (the program I'm going with), all I could think of were a billion problems and doubts I had about going, and tons of reasons I shouldn't go. Despite all the reasons I shouldn't go, God kept giving me one single verse: Matthew 4:22, which reads as follows.

"and immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him."

For some reason, it reminds me of something my ex-youth leader Daniel Gilland once said about counting the cost. That sometimes following God requires more of you than you are initially willing to give. Following God sometimes requires leaving people you won't ever see again, leaving the places you love, or, in my case, leaving Georgia and living 10 months in a foreign country that doesn't speak my language. At the same time, i'm also reminded of what the Apostles had to do to follow Jesus. Essentially, they subjected themselves to a life of ridicule, and, for most of them, martyrdom. My predicament is a little smaller in that respect.

All I know right now is that I am on my way out of here. It makes me kind of sad, but at the same time it really doesn't. I've been in a sort of pensive mood lately because of it. There is constantly a discrepancy between me wanting to run away to some country and never be seen again and me wanting to live a somewhat typical life in the United States (only to a degree though. See two posts prior for an explanation). I'm constantly wondering where I belong: in the field, or in the forest. As I have said to some people, reevaluating the line between sanity and calling.

I don't know the answer yet. All I know right now is that I'm on my way.

~Jared