What do you need? Really?

The past few weeks have been very trying and tiresome. I have realized that I did not plan as much as I should have for this trip. I have found out that waiting till last minute is not much fun. I have discovered that I don't really like planning, and that is why I put things off. Most important of all, I have noticed that life keeps on moving, even when you don't.  Seconds pass by, minutes fade away, and before you know it you fly to China in three days and have not even started packing.

Not only does life continue to move, but it has the tendency to throw you curve balls as well. In the middle of all my planning my hard drive decided to crash. I lost everything. EVERYTHING. No more music, no more pictures, no more trip planning materials. Resume that I spent hours creating? Poof. Candid shots of my semester abroad? Nada. Sure, I have a fair amount of photos on Facebook and I would also venture to guess that my resume may be found in the sent folder of my Gmail account. But in the moment, it felt as though my entire world had just fallen out from under me. Right when I was getting ready to put my world on hold to discover a new one on the other side of the globe, my comforts and familiarities at home were suddenly gone.

While I don't necessarily believe that God is sitting upstairs with puppet strings controlling when my hard drive is going to fail, showering me with anxieties like rain from a Seattle sky, I do believe he can teach me a lot through it. First, the importance of backing up and preparing for the unknown, because you don't know what you've got until it's gone! I'm not just talking about things digitally either. Tell people you love them, in the moment, when you can. Take the time you have to grow while you're young so you don't look back when you're old. Choose to focus on the positives, because if you really spend the time doing so you will discover that they always outweigh the negatives. Continue to press on in the face hardships and setbacks. Be a person of commitment, doing what you say when you say you're going to do it. We have three main choices: give up, give in, or give it all you've got.  I choose the later.

Second, I have begun learning what you really need in life, and it isn't much. I don't need an iPhone, or a MacBook, or a fancy car, or the best clothes. Are they alluring? Yes. Do I like my iPhone? You bet! But do I NEEEEED it? No. Looking back it is funny to think about riding around with my mom in our old white Mazda van, going about our daily duties before cell phones were even popular. We survived, and I imagine that in a lot of ways we survived much better. Now we live in an age where we have to know the answer to the problem or question in the exact moment. But as I have slowly been discovering, "life is not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be lived."

So, am I going on my trip? Yes. Do I have everything figured out and planned? No. Will everything work out alright? Most definitely. In fact, this is probably how it was meant to be all along. God uses the most difficult of situations to point you back to him, causing you to realize it's him first, everything else second. I am excited to see the world and all that He has in store for me along the way, because I know the learning has only just begun. My friend Joanie sent me an amazing quote to that I intend to remind myself of each step of the way: "Live in the present. Launch yourself on every wave. Find eternity in each moment." With that in mind I gear up to answer the call of the wild.

Romans 8:28 "We know that all things work for good for those who love God."