July 2020

Decisions are hard. I really understand what the Doctor was saying when he said that sometimes the only decisions that are available to make are bad ones, but there's still the matter of choosing. I understood that quote on a deep level: take for instance, when Alan Turing built the machine that decoded the German's Enigma codes. In the movie adaptation of Alan's life, they decoded a message about a ship full of civilians and soldiers being bombed that day, but the problem was was they couldn't alert anyone to what they had decoded because they didn't want the Germans to know that their message had been translated. The ramifications of choosing between life and death weighs heavier on the soul than most decisions and choices that we make in life. I didn't have to weigh between which lives are worth saving and which ones are not. Not now, anyway. I simply had to choose whether or not I wanted to go overseas this year for my junior year of college. For many who have gone before, this opportunity offers growth in an area of the world that's very unfamiliar, and other opportunities like learning another language and getting to know the people in a community with traditions that are their own which are there for outsiders to learn about. To have the chance to get to do something like that is what I've wanted to do my whole life. Growing up I just felt like I didn't belong in small places and that I was supposed to do more. I have been exploring that at my school at minnesota, and sometimes coming home after break I felt like I was better suited to a big diverse city like Minneapolis. Being evacuated in early march because of covid, I had to adjust to being back home sooner than I thought was going to happen, but sometimes life happens and pulls the rug out from under you, which also happens to throw off anything you might have planned in your calendar. For the most part, I feel relief, because in talking to friends and family, all have told me that it's a good idea to stave off my plans and work on finding other ways to keep life happening for me this year. When it comes to other emotions, I feel sad, and disappointed because I feel like I didn't do enough to help me get to my goal of what I wanted to do. But the feeling of not doing enough in my life to be successful has been a constant companion, borne from past parental relationships and mindsets that I kept to survive in hard circumstances. This time I think, will be a respite to work on trusting God and having faith that everything is supposed to work out the way it's supposed to. Not my will but His alone, right? I have tears to shed and time to think about how I can take these next couple of months to get closer with family, continue the work I've been doing in counseling, and the beginnings of the foundation of my future and what the next few years will look like for me. Please be praying that I figure out ways to be vulnerable with others about how I feel in this time, and that I also learn how to vulnerable with God during this hard time. It's difficult to lay something like this down before His feet and surrender, but I think it's something I've been needing to learn the meaning of for a long time. If anything, this is what gives me comfort; the fact that even though it hurts to make this kind of decision and stay in a familiar place even when I long to be somewhere I've never been before, here's what I do know: that God is not disappointed in me and never will be. This also gives me comfort as well, and if you're having a bad time of things yourself, I hope this helps where needed.

Thanks so much for reading guys, and happy friday!