This past weekend, I decided to be an adult and buy some new furniture. After much store hopping (10 stores to be exact) and even more grace from the friend who bravely decided to shop with me, I found the pieces I wanted to buy. After coming home and realizing that now meant I needed to clean out my current drawers and prepare the way for the new, I found an old journal from 2015/2016.
Just a little back story – at this time in my life I was about to enter my senior year of college, I didn’t know what my grad school situation looked like, I wasn’t convinced I wanted to be a CPA, and I didn’t know what job I would land after college.
So with that being said, I was curious as to what I wrote about as college Courtney (because even though I lived it, I forget how I felt and how I thought in those moments). I found a journal entry from July of 2015, just a few weeks before I was to start my first internship, my dream internship(!!), and this is an excerpt of what I wrote –
“I’ve been waiting on this huge revelation about what to do next, when God revealed it to me months ago. What I now know is that my next step is a smaller step than I expected, but I’m not disappointed. I trust my Creator. I may not know exactly why my next step is what it is, but God does and I trust that His higher perspective shows much more than my earthly one. This step will somehow lead me closer to becoming who I’m meant to be…”
Fast forward to today, and I’m honestly brought to tears at the work the Lord was doing in my life even then. After reading those words, I find myself jumping back into that moment. When I wrote that God revealed my next step a few months before, I had literally accepted the internship position 6 months before writing these words, but I was still so focused on the search for a permanent job (because I just knew that would be my next step-LOL at my plans) that I almost overlooked the value of the internship. I almost missed that the internship wasn’t just something to pass the time, it was my next step.
And I took that step in obedience, trusting that the Lord would work out His grand plan for me and that was somehow a part of it. I knew taking that step would lead me in the direction I was supposed to go, but I didn’t know how. I had no idea how that internship would play into God’s plan for my life. I didn’t know that fours years later I would accept a full-time position with the same incredible organization, thanks to the time I spent in my internship. I didn’t know at the time, but God did.
He knew that the step I saw as “small” was actually the foundation step of my future career. He knew when I was disappointed at not being able to stay there back then, I would be back eventually. He knew it all. He knows it all.
I can look back now and say “This is why I took that step,” and thank God I did. And as precious as it is to look back and see the pieces come together, I’m reminded that I can’t look forward and say the same for where I will be four years from now. But God can.
This is the point – When the Lord says in Isaiah, “My ways are higher than your ways and My thoughts higher than your thoughts,” trust Him. Even when you don’t “get it.” Even when it makes no sense at all and you think you’re just wasting time. Let go of the steps you think you should be taking and spend some time looking for the steps the Lord has already laid out for you. When you find those steps as He reveals them, take them in obedience. Trust His eternal perspective over your human vision every single day of the week, y’all.
And while you’re at it, write it down. Document the journey. Keep track of the work He is doing in your life. Because it’s an incredible thing to be able to look back, see exactly where you were and what you were thinking four years ago, and see how the Lord has been faithful to make it all work together for good.
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