"Now what!?"

Just about a week ago, I was temporarily saying farewell to the love of my life. Exactly a week prior to that, I was making phone calls, sending text messages, sharing pictures and words of joy to announce that we had just been engaged to embark a journey towards marriage. 

Talk about an emotional roller coaster! 

Man how time flies. All of that was already two weeks ago. Oddly enough it sort of feels like none of this ever even happened. It's funny how these big moments in life happen and the question that follows is "Now What!?"

It's also funny how life can put so much pressure on certain significant moments, and before one can even realize the moment happened, life offers you questions associated to the "next big moment."

I could be wrong on this, but in my opinion (according to my experience) the first major life question is: "SOoooo have you picked out a college yet!?" soon after this one is "What are you studying, what do you want to do with your life?" and then it's "Have you found a job yet" or " Are you dating anyone?" soon follows the "When are you two getting engaged??" question and the obvious one that follows is "So when is the wedding?" and this one I, myself, have asked far to many times "When are you two starting a family??" and then the questions start to die down… or do they?

Should our identity really be focused on these big moments in our lives? These "big questions" are innocent, and actually meant to be loving and caring but do we think about how they affect one's identity? What about the one who decides to never go to college, or to never get married, or to not have any children? What happens to them? (my mind is rambling)

It's so easy to follow the routine of life, that we can often loose sight of life itself. That's how easy it is to miss out on the things God has to offer, simply due to our focus on doing things "right" by following social norms. This often leads to a misconception of identity which then bring us to confusion and lack of vision.

I was reading 1 Corinthians 12 earlier and was reminded by the Spirit of how important it is to focus solely on who we are created to be without trying to be anything or anyone else. We are each created differently (thank God) so let us embrace these differences that mark our journey and let us move forward as we focus on the journey itself rather than our neighbors' journeys. Far to often, we waste our time walking forward while looking at the person next to us rather than embracing what's ahead of us. How can anything be accomplished if we all end up performing the exact same task? Or if we focus on someone else's task rather than our own?

Friends, despite the hardships, let us rejoice and embrace the different journeys God has laid before us. 

My journey is different from others'. I personally couldn't (still can't) understand why I had issues with my papers when I was in the US, why I couldn't find a job on time, why I had/have to deal with long distance relationship, why I have totally lost drive for the passions God had once put on my heart, why I can always make new friends only to loose old ones due to the distance, why this and why that etc etc etc… but today, I choose to accept my journey and embrace every aspect of it. The good and the bad. At least this is my hope and my goal.

Though I see things a bit clearer, I still don't understand everything, and that is the beauty of life.

I am blessed through it all. I am challenged. I am growing. I am learning, and I have a wonderful person to walk this crazy journey with me. For that I am so thankful. I'm not taking for granted the fact that Jeremy and I have reached this "big moment" in our lives. In fact, I'm attempting to do quite the opposite; I am choosing to embrace this new "status" of ours through the distance by making the best of my time here and focusing on why God wants me here as opposed to daydreaming of what's ahead and missing out on life happening right before my eyes. 

I hope that my eyes and heart will be opened to what this new year has in store. That I may keep growing, learning, rejoicing through the challenges I face. Only by His grace.

PS: thank you all for your prayers and warm thoughts towards Jeremy and myself. He's been really busy at work, which has been keeping him busy, and I've felt your prayers throughout this entire past week. God is doing some serious work in me and I know I can thank you for helping with that!!

Be blessed

Djo

This is a photo I took a couple of days before writing this blog entry. I happened to find it today and thought it had just the imagery to fit this theme.

It's a picture of my father driving in Normandie, France and you can  notice that  he is looking straight ahead. It's important to look in the rear view mirror every now and then to help us move forward, but we do need to focus on looking straight up and straight ahead. 

You can also notice the Bible right underneath the GPS that is guiding my father to whatever destination we were headed towards ( I believe we were either on our way home, or on our way to the temple where he has taken a temporary volunteer position to pastor over a small community for a few months).