Does Not Now Mean Not Ever?

I've finally gained some perspective to be able to write this blog post. Until today, I didn't really have the right words to say what's on my heart, but I think now I have a few.

It is with a heavy heart to say that my post-graduate Plan A did not work out. I did not get accepted for the Disney College Program in January.

To look at those words is sobering. When I got the initial email late last week (cherry on top of a perfect week, will discuss at length at some point,) it almost didn't seem real. In some way, I knew to expect it since I hadn't heard anything, but I tried to keep my hopes up because the impossible could happen. But it wasn't meant to be this time.

So much of my life and career goal has revolved around this dream to return to Disney and stay there forever because that's what everyone has expected me to do. I'm the girl who loves Disney more than myself, and I'm not quite sure who I am without it.

But what if that's not all I am? What if I'm being led in another direction because maybe there's something I haven't discovered about myself yet? What if there are more layers to me than even I realize?

What if maybe this is not a slammed, locked, and bolted door, but it's just a turn down the hallway?

"Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God's work from beginning to end." - Ecclesiastes 3:11 (NLT)

It's like looking at an object under a microscope. We look at our lives as if we are examining one single cell and its many components, magnifying each decision we make as vital to the flourishing or the death of that cell. But we can only see our lives with the magnifier is turned to its highest setting because, as the book of Ecclesiastes goes on to discuss, human wisdom is limited. Thus, we cannot see how our lives pan out and go on to affect other lives within the organism of God's creation.

If only God's plan were as simple as reading a biology textbook.

The answers I seek, as so many of us do, are not stored in a test bank, and the problems we face cannot be explained by a theory, nor solved by an equation. We find the answers we are searching for by drawing close to God and engaging in conversation with Him. He knows the desires of our hearts and will give them to us if we only ask, but sometimes, those desires require a bit of waiting before we receive them. Perhaps right now is my period of waiting.

So, with a patient and eager heart, I wait. I will wait to be led to my next destination, though I am honestly not sure where that is just yet. My constant prayer is that I serve purpose in the lives of those I work with and for, and I have dreams in mind about where I would like to work and where I would like to settle down, but maybe I am being told to stop shouting my dreams at God and start listening to where He sees me next.

Here's to one more month of undergraduate life and to trusting that "no" right now doesn't always mean "no" forever.