My Ten Year Plan

When I was going to be a teacher, I had the next ten or so years of my life pretty well mapped out:
-1 more year to graduate
-2 years of service work abroad (hopefully Africa)
-2-3 years teaching wherever I could find a job
-2 years getting my Masters in English
-teach for the rest of my employed life

That last one was a little less definite, because there’s always the question of how long I would spend at one school. Also affecting the final portion was the fact that in the back of my female mind remained this thought about eventually marriage and how that played into it all.

Regardless, now things have changed significantly. First, I’m not sure I want to dedicate two years to service, and I’m not sure I want to do it internationally. Currently, I’m thinking about a year of domestic service work, possibly with an organization like JVC or something solid and dependable. I’d like to try to do something with youth, maybe prison ministry, homeless shelters, or something for the developmentally challenged. I think that having experiences with youth and in this country would lend itself better to my future career than spending time abroad.

After I do service, I want to find a job somewhere. Anywhere, really. I’ve never been super attached to places, and I can see myself in most parts of the country. Chicago, St. Louis, Georgia, Seattle, Louisiana, Arizona, Ohio, Tennessee, Maine, West Virginia… mostly anywhere except New England. Or really, really cold places, like Wisconsin. I’m from Texas, after all. But really, I’m open to mostly anything, geographically speaking.

Which makes it kind of difficult, to be honest. It might be easier if I could narrow it down to something more specific. The same goes for denominations. I don’t really belong to any one protestant denomination, so I could go a lot of directions with that. We’ll just see were God leads me.

Recently I came across a website called YouthPastor.com where you can sign up to receive e-mail alerts whenever an employer posts an open position in their site. You can define the specific position, denomination, and part of the country you would like to get notifications for. I signed up, even though I’m not necessarily looking for anything at this point. But I get e-mails pretty much every day, and there are quite a few that have interested me. So many talk about wanting dynamic, energetic, caring people. Quite a few are looking for someone to design a program from the ground up. Even though I’m not ready to apply, just knowing that these options are out there makes me incredibly excited about my future.

Well, my ten years might not be set in stone. Who knows if seminary is in the future at some point. And as the saying goes, if you want to hear God laugh, tell Him your plans. It’s totally up to Him where my life is going to go. So I will trust Him to lead me there.



Today I turn around
Stop running away from Him.

Today I listen
And run toward.