freedom!

Man, I am feeling so much freedom right now. I have felt so trapped where I am for a while - living with my parents, not knowing what is next, substitute teaching with no end in sight, just feeling like life is on hold in general.

But then I talked to a friend. I told her of a few ideas I had, but wasn't sure about. And she said she had been thinking the same thing, for a few of the same reasons as I had. That just brought so much freedom to explore these other options! I don't know if I am limited by God or by false loyalty to things that I need to just say goodbye to, but I feel much better now. I now feel like I can pursue these options without guilt, knowing that I don't have to commit to anything right now, and I still have to follow God's voice the whole way, whether I stay with my current situation or move on to other things.

I know this is kind of cryptic, so you can email me if you want more specifics. Not everyone will be glad to hear of my possible changes, so I didn't want to just broadcast them to the whole world.

On another note, some hope was released into my heart. I have been feeling like "why do I have to be here?" As I mentioned before, I feel pretty much stuck here. So a friend compared my experience to Joseph, when he was in jail before being elevated to 2nd in command of Egypt. Not that I will ever be 2nd in command of Egypt, but Joseph was given a vision of his brothers bowing down to him, it was essentially killed while he was in jail, and then God re-instated the vision, better than Joseph ever could have imagined later on. In a similar way, I was given a dream for India, and it has to die before God can do with it what He wants, and He will be glorified much more through it later. My question this past week has been "Why did Joseph have to be in jail?" This is a valid question, to some extent, but the real question is, "Why do I have to wait so long?"

I didn't get a whole answer to this, but I do feel like God spoke to my heart, reassuring me that He is still in control and He does have a reason for this "postponement" of my dream to go to India. The part of an answer that I did get had more to do with me not seeing the whole picture. I often think I have everything figured out, but I really only see a small fraction of the whole story of this (or any) situation. The encouragement came to me as I saw an opening for a teacher at a private school in India. For a while, I thought this might be the reason I was in this "holding pattern" for the past few months... this option wasn't known to me 2 months ago, so I couldn't have pursued it then, but I can now. I just had to wait for it. After looking at the website, I now realize that this probably isn't going to work out for me, but just the idea of it was a great reminder that I cannot see every option of the future. There may be some other opportunity that presents itself 7 months from now that I just have to wait for. All this waiting is not in vain. And that brings me hope!