tonight, we actually last night if you want to get technical, i attended EJS's high school graduation. it was an all american event: in the stadium, numerous american flags flying, kids running around, deputy sheriffs walking around telling people that they had to be seated in the grandstands, screams of joy from parents as their children are now officially adults, then cries of sadness with the realization that they will need to start paying those tuition bills very soon and so much more.
as i sat there gazing at what the principal call a "cabbage patch of green with bright smiling faces" i thought back to my graduations. i thought about the most recent, my sudo college graduation. i call it that because i don't actually have my degree, just a few ge classes to get out of the way for the piece of paper. but i remember the day leading up to the event. i did not want to go. i did not want to do it. it's not that i am striving to be a student forever, i just did not want the ceremony or the party or the people there. i just wanted it to be without the pomp and circumstance.
then i began thinking about my high school graduation. it was eleven years ago this month that i graduate from high school. my life has been in so many places since then, that i am not sure i remember where i wanted to be in the first place. i do remember this... i knew that from the moment that i walked across the stage and accepted my diploma, or the representation that i was handed, my life would forever be changed and that there was nothing that i could do about it to change that. but what i didn't know was that my life would be so drastically different.
i had no idea that my dad was going to get sick and die within the next year. i had no idea that i would end up working as a youth director at a small church in the central valley. i had no idea that i would actually graduate from college and not spend the rest of my life working for the state of california. all of this... i had no clue, but God did and He does have a clue about what will be happening next.
in all of the ups and downs that i faced in the last eleven years since crossing the stage at the sacramento convention center, God was right there with me. when my dad was dying, Jesus was right there with His arms around me, holding me tight. when i took the bold step and moved out of my mom's house ten years ago God was there leading my way.
there has not been a time when i felt that He wasn't alone.
Comments