You Aren't Born With Your Passion - Part 1

If you had asked me at this time in my junior year what I wanted to do with my life, I would not have had an answer.  It wasn't that I had no interests; I had many interests.  I had too many interests and didn't know what I wanted to do with them.  When it came to choosing a career or college major, I felt like God had lost my phone number.  If you are a high school student being told to "follow your passion" but don't know what it is yet, this post and the next one are for you.

Let me back up to elementary school.  If you had asked me in third grade what I wanted to be when I grew up, it would have looked something like this:

Yep, that was my plan.  I was going to have a husband and three kids.  I was also going to pilot the space shuttle.  For those of you that say, "Yeah, everybody wanted to be an astronaut," notice that I didn't say that.  My goals were very specific; I was going to pilot the space shuttle.  I had a plan for this.  In fourth grade, I somehow got my hands on an application to the air force academy.  I had it completely filled out (you have to imagine the fourth grader handwriting to fully appreciate this).  I had people lined up to write me recommendation letters and was getting advice on how to have a congressperson provide me with an appointment.  I carried around pictures of the shuttle next to my pictures of Michael J. Fox and had photos of the moon in my notebooks.  This was going to happen.  Until . . .

Have you ever looked up the requirements for astronauts?  If you do so today, you can be 6'3" regardless of gender, but in the 80's, a female astronaut couldn't be taller than 5'8" tall.  I passed that height in fifth grade and kept growing until I reached 5'11" at the age of fifteen.  I was not going to pilot the space shuttle.  Well-meaning people who were honestly trying to be helpful told me some very stupid things.  Among them, I would be so good that NASA would change the rules for me (seriously?).

The most dangerous thing that several people told this disappointed fifth grader was that God wouldn't have let me want it so much if it wasn't His plan for me.  I had read enough of the Bible at that point to know that was garbage.  As an adult, let me just say that not matter how well meaning you are - This. Is. Heresy.  The advice to follow one's heart is ridiculous when put up next scriptures that tell us the heart is desperately wicked.  The idea that God won't let you want things He doesn't want for you flies in the face of Paul asking to have his thorn in the flesh removed.  Don't say this to children; don't say it to anyone.

So, I was a little aimless for a while.  As I mentioned earlier, I had many interests.  I loved animals, theater, science, music, television, church activities, and books.  I played the piano, the clarinet, and the handbells.  I participated in school plays and babysat and volunteered for the NC Right to Life.  There wasn't a lack of interest; there was a lack of focus.  I was interested in everything (except sports - I never could seem to get psyched about that).  I considered all kinds of careers.  If I had become everything I considered during this time, it would have looked like this:

Yes, I would have been a writing, photograph taking, elementary school teaching, pharmaceutical, veterinarian, physical therapist.  And, oh yeah, I still wanted to have a husband and three kids.  

I was a little lost, not knowing what I wanted to do or what God wanted me to do.  I remained in that wandering state until my senior year, but remember the line from JJ Tolkien's poem, "All That is Gold Does Not Glitter."  He reminds us that "not all those who wander are lost."  

More on this in my next post.