by Evan Dinelli There’s a reason no one says our biggest life lessons come when life is easy. For me, transitions have always been tough—I seem to have a knack for botching them—but they have also been my seasons of greatest growth. Before the struggles of adjusting to college 4 years ago, God was merely a concept to me. But amid the trials of my first semester, the reality of God came into my life and changed everything around me: how I view myself, how I view others, and how I view God’s glory (as ultimate). Upon graduating and moving to Chicago for work, I struggled with consistent stress and seemed to have transition troubles 2.0. There are plenty of practical reasons why adjusting was hard, but here’s the biggest lesson I learned: What you believe affects everything you do, so when you’re assessing your problems, it’s best to begin with the heart. Therefore, rather than giving you my top 5 adulting mistakes—by the way, LÄRABARs don’t count as dinner—here’s the best advice I have for the heart of a millennial in transition: IT’S NOT ABOUT YOU. Isaiah 6:1–8 tells of Isaiah’s transition from a focus on himself to a focus on the glory of the Lord. "I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called to another and said: "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!" And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. And I said: "Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!" Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth and said: "Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for." And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?" Then I said, "Here I am! Send me." God’s glory is ultimate. Compared to God, whatever else has no weight. In this text, when God’s glory comes down, everything is changed. While Isaiah already believed in God before he walked into the temple, until this moment God was just a concept to him. When God was merely a concept to me, I shaped how God fit into my life plans, and not much changed, because the heart of my beliefs didn’t change. What is true for Isaiah is true for us: experiencing God’s glory rearranges our existing beliefs and leaves us saying, “Woe is me!” When we see our lives compared to God’s holiness, we are taken back from thinking of ourselves and made to gaze upon our holy God. You are probably familiar with questions like "What are your plans after college?” or “What’s your five year plan?” When we have the opportunity to contemplate these questions, it's easy to dream and plan selfishly. The trap is to think it's about us: our comfort, our status, and our glory. In these plans we obsess over how we fit in and how others perceive us. On the contrary, the reality of God frees us to take the focus off ourselves and say, "Here I am, Lord, send me.” Your plan, your glory, not mine. The glory of God puts an end to thoughts such as, "Am I ever going to do something big with my life? Does this experience benefit me and make me look good? Do I feel good here?” In fact, we can stop thinking it's about us at all. Here lies the secret for planning and transitioning well. God, help us to be so moved by your majesty that we can be freed of lesser cares and affections. Continually teach us to gaze upon your glory to find freedom from the empty path of self-focus.
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By Chelsea Sherlock
A lot of my energy during college was used to try to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. I knew what I wanted to study, but not what I wanted to do with it. Should I pursue working for a church or non-profit? Did I want to graduate school? Could I survive graduate school? Should I stay in the U.S. or go abroad? Was I being selfish if I went the corporate path? For most of senior year, I thought I had figured it out. My calling was overseas missions. I told people that was what I was doing. Then in March, three months before graduation, God said no. Suddenly I had to once again start looking for a job. When I was hired and started my current job, I thought that feeling of uncertainty would end. I was in the world of marketing. I’d made a decision and it was going well. For a brief period, I felt like I was I was doing what the King had planned for me as I settled into my apartment, got used to my position and invested in a small group through my church. Then those internal questions about what I'm doing with my life came back. Once again, I've been wrestling with the topic of "what do I want to do with my life?" and "what is God calling me to do with my time?" As I've talked to more people my age and further along in life, this seems like something that won't go away for a while. It's expected that in this stage of our life as young adults, we're going to be seekers for a while and will be on and off for the rest of our life. One of the best parts of this stage of our life is the amount of freedom we have to move to new areas, choose how we spend our free time, volunteer for a cause we care about, find a side hustle, and give financially. The downside of the freedom is that the amount of choices can diminish our certainty that we made the right choice. People in my life have provided needed guidance for moving forward in pursuit of God when things seem unclear, and I'd love to pass it on.... “Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.” - Proverbs 3:5. 1) God will direct you on your path. Pick a direction, move towards it and trust God to course correct as needed. Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” - Matthew 22:37-40 2) God's chief desire for his disciples is for them to love Him and love His people. If what you are passionate about what falls under those two commandments, it fits within God's will. We have room to choose based on our desires and preferences when the options don’t oppose God’s will. “This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.” - 1 John 5:14 3) Pray. Speak with God, asking Him for guidance, sharing your frustration, confusion, excitement and any other thing you’re experiencing. Ask Him to provide opportunities and wise council. Yield your will to His. Ask for him to give you a sacrificial heart, wisdom and a willingness to embrace being uncomfortable. “We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives, so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience,” – Colossians 1:9-11 4) Know that God might not have something that seems impressive planned for this stage of your life. Jesus didn’t start his ministry until his thirties, which is around the same age David was when he became King, and Paul was when he became a Christian. Moses was 80 when he led the Israelites from Egypt. This might be a season of growth that prepares you for what God has next. There is no perfect strategy for knowing how to spend your time and money and what to pursue career-wise, but hopefully these will provide a good framework. For me they have been guidelines that have helped me go from just thinking about what I should do with my life to actually taking action - even if that action step is something small like emailing someone for more information, sending an application or choosing to go to an event or meeting. We have the freedom through trusting the Lord to try and fail and try and fail again as we pursue serving Him. by Kate Wildman
When I started college, I moved so far from home. Farther than I had ever thought possible. Farther than anyone should be expected to move at the ripe age of eighteen. We’re talking roughly three thousand…steps...from my childhood home…Scratch all of that. I went to college basically in my back yard, at a school where my mother was a professor and where I knew approximately everyone. I never had to go through the relocating pains that most of my friends went through when they started college, but this made my transition when I moved to Washington, D.C. three years later that much harder. As I worked to build a new home in a place that felt like anything but, I discovered a few principles that would have made my transition so much easier. By the time I left D.C. to return back to Chicago for graduation just nine months later, I left deep friendships that endure to this day, a job I loved, a church that felt like family, and streets that still feel like an old friend every time I return. As you look beyond graduation and consider your own transitions away from the places and people you call home, here are some things I wish someone had told me to make my move that much easier from the very beginning. 1) Join a Church, FAST. There’s nothing more important than ensuring your soul is fed as everything around you feels uncertain. Finding (and committing to!!) a church is hands down the most crucial aspect of your move. By surrounding yourself with other believers from the very beginning of your time in a new city, you establish friendships quickly, invite accountability, and easily find ways to serve your new community. In each of my subsequent moves, I set a time limit of no more than six weeks to find and commit to a church body. Church shopping only serves to distract, discourage putting down roots, and prioritize your own desires over obedience—as soon as you find a Bible-preaching church where you feel you can serve, stop looking and dig in. 2) Find Two Communities Loneliness, for me, is by far the most difficult part of any move. In order to maximize my chances of making friends quickly, I always make sure that I look to establish at least two communities when I move. These can include your church family, your co-workers, a weeknight basketball league, a book club, a local food pantry—no matter the avenue, make sure there’s more than one, and with as little cross-over as possible. This will force you to be bold, while increasing the number of people you interact with in a place that feels so unfamiliar. 3) Put Down Roots It’s easy when you move to focus on how easy it is to up and go somewhere new if it doesn’t work out, particularly on those Friday nights where you don’t have plans and are homesick for the people you left behind. When I move, I try to frame every decision I make as if the place I was living was going to be my home for the next ten years, and immediately start establishing routines, whether that’s stopping at the same coffee place every Saturday, taking the same route to work each day, setting aside a night of the week for small groups, or finding a friend to have a weekly coffee date. This allows me to take intentional ownership over getting involved at church, understanding and serving the needs of my community, and, most importantly, cultivating deep relationships with others. It’s hard to build meaningful connections, much less contentment, if you constantly have one foot out the door. 4) Make the First Move I can’t encourage you enough to stop waiting for other people to invite you into their community. If you are lonely, and if you want to build community, it’s up to you to take ownership and make the first move. Ask people you find interesting out to coffee, start connecting the many people you meet, host groups at your apartment, invite others to join you as you explore your new neighborhood—the more time you wait for someone to ask you first, the more discouraged you will feel if it doesn’t happen. You have the power, however lonely you feel, to make others feel significant and included, and that’s more important to building lasting community than easing your own sense of discomfort. 5) Let Yourself Grieve I believed the lie for a long time that because God called me somewhere new, I wasn’t allowed to feel homesick for the place I left behind. This ended up building into deeply-seeded discontentment and bitterness, as well as an unhealthy ideation of home. We’re all called to be nomads on this earth, sure—but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. When you feel sad or nostalgic or homesick, don’t ignore it. Lean into it, grieve the good things you left behind, and allow the Lord to carry your burdens and remind you that he, in the end, is more than enough to satisfy your longing. 6) Cultivate Old Connections As you start to build connections in your new home, don’t be surprised when your friendships from your hold home change. Even though these changes can sometimes be even more difficult than building new friendships, it’s important to also remember to cultivate your old friendships, even if they look different now than they used to. The people you left behind—your friends, family, and church body—are all your brothers and sisters, first and foremost. Be realistic about how your relationships change, but don’t drop the people who are important to you even though they are no longer close in proximity. 7) Keep Your Satisfaction in the Lord Above all else, hold on to the truth that no earthly thing can satisfy you. When we are lonely, or disappointed, or anxious, it’s our heart’s first move to long for change, and too easy to look to a person, a place, a job, or an emotion to satisfy our longing. Use times of transition to remind you that your home is in Heaven, and ask the Lord to cultivate a deep contentment in his word, his promises, and his salvation above cultivating a sense of home. He goes before you, he stands behind you, and he alone can satisfy. by Mary Elizabeth Goodell
Have you seen that meme? The one of Kim Kardashian crying? Make up smeared, hair mussed, and her face scrunched up in a whine? While the Kardashian look is often imitated, that image isn't one most people want to replicate. Even for someone as lovely as Kim, it's not a good look. But there I was, the night of my college senior banquet, doing the full on Kim Kardashian Kry alone in my car. My friends had all gone to the after party, but I had excused myself, saying that I was too tired. Really I had been trying to get out and be alone as quickly as possible, because my inner Kardashian was about to burst. Senior Banquet is supposed to be a little emotional. It's an entire evening dedicated to reflecting on the last four years. It makes sense that I would have been a little weepy as I reminisced. But it wasn't the nostalgic pictures of myself as a freshmen that set me off. It was something much much dumber than that. At the end of the evening, a group of my friends all gathered to take a picture. While I had made lots of sweet friends at school, this particular group had been my home base. My crew. My fam-bam. I had been through a lot with them and had prayed with and for them in some of the most exciting and heartbreaking times of my young adult life. They all clamored together to fit in the frame. The event had just ended and people were beginning to leave so they wanted to fit us all into one more memory before we left. I stood at the back of the room and watched. No one called my name. None of them invited me to join the picture. No one said "Wait! Where's Mary Elizabeth?" I'm pretty tall, and usually hard to miss in a crowd. Feeling invisible is not a familiar feeling and I hated it. There they were, all 11 of my dearest. And not one of them noticed I was gone. None of them missed me. Looking back, it was an innocent mistake. They'd all been standing near each other and got a photo. They never intended to exclude me. It was a spontaneous photo op and they didn't realize I wasn't there. They didn't mean to hurt me or leave me out. It was an accident. But something in me snapped like a twig. I remember feeling like a bowling ball had landed on my chest. I stood silently and felt all of the icky horrible feelings that hide under our skin like monsters under the bed. We hadn't even graduated, and they were forgetting me. It's like I wasn't there. If I wasn't in this photo, they would never remember I was here. I was already on the outside. Somehow, I just knew that they would all be looking at this photo for years to reminisce on their college years and that I would be erased from their memories. This was the beginning of the end. This was the moment I realized I was losing my friends and becoming mayor of lonely town. It was incredibly vain and selfish on my part. I could not have been more self centered about it. Of course they loved me and cared about our mutual experiences. But all the emotions of senior year and the impending mystery of life post-grad were looming and had me scared out of my senses. Literally. The intense sadness I felt was not logical. But I was so scared to graduate and disappear. It was like that scene in the final Harry Potter book, when Hermione erases herself from her parents memory and her image fades from all the family photos. Honestly, I felt like graduating was akin to..well...obscurity. I had been so known on campus. I was needed and seen and visible. I had spent the last four years establishing myself and grounding myself in community, and now all of that was being taken away from me. My friends had made me happy, and now it was Iike it had never happened and I would be alone. So, there I was, crying harder than that one time Kim lost her diamond earrings. So do you know what? I made a list of all the things that would be the same after I graduated. I got specific. I would still have the same clothes, I would still have my Apple Music free trial, all of my stuff would still go in the same purse. I could still make quesadillas when I was in a good mood and watch Seinfeld on my laptop. My stuffed giraffe could sit on my bed like before and I could take my poster of Audrey Hepburn with me into adulthood too. As I wrote that list, I tried to think of everything. But you may be noticing that I missed a biggie. It wasn't until I had been graduated for a few weeks that the truth kicked in. Obviously, Jesus Christ would still be Lord of my life. In high school, in college, in Chicago, and forever and ever, amen. I had cried over a selfie because I thought graduating meant losing my friends and that losing my friends meant losing my foundation. So much of my spiritual growth and emotional happiness had come from them, that I forgot exactly who it was that bolstered all of that. I am not going to lie to you, friend. It is hard to keep in touch after graduation. You may go months without hearing from people you once spoke to every day. But, it was never the friends who grounded me. And it was never the friends that saved me. It was never your friends that saved you. I had wonderful friends, I'm sure you had some good ones too. They loved me and pointed me to Jesus. The Lord had used them to grow me and sustain me and bless me. Which is precisely why separation from them was not cause for panic. They had been a vehicle, not the destination. The stability had always come from Christ, often via those sweet friendships. But Jesus, the giver of that joy, was coming with me to Chicago, just as He was going with them to Colorado and New York and Guatemala and Arkansas. So even if you ugly cry because you are losing the folks who make you happy- remember who brings you pure joy. Friends are a beautiful way the Lord demonstrates care for us. But remember that friends, the best friends, reflect Christ to you. And in seasons of rich community or anonymous loneliness, Jesus is the river that pours into us. In His timing, the Lord will bring new community to surround you, and many of those old pals will still be important, lifegiving people to you. But promise me that when you want to Kim Kry, you'll remember that you have not lost your true foundation. |
AuthorMay 22nd's post is from Mary Elizabeth Goodell. She lives in Ukrainian Village on the west side of Chicago and works for Hope Works Community Development. She is committed to working with and for the disenfranchised, particularly women who have experienced sexual exploitation and gender based violence.
BloggersWe'll post from a variety of voices of 20-somethings in the Windy City who are navigating life, work and relationships post-college. Archives
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