I don't need an advanced degree to serve God.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately.  Ok, I've been thinking about this probably since college.  Not precisely about not needing an advanced degree to serve God as I wrote in the title of this post, but about what the heck I've supposed to be doing with my life.  A few years ago I applied to teach English overseas but didn't go.  Then I decided recently to look into GIAL and possibly pursue a degree in World Arts which would be appropriate training for using arts in missions.  I've also been considering going back to school to study art therapy.  But let's boil this all down.  What is my desire?  To use art to love people and to love God.  Ok.  And I love the idea of international missions because I grew up overseas.  So why am I continually putting this off to consider more graduate studies?  I'm seeking God's call on my life.  But what does that look like?!  I don't know.  I do know that songs like "Oceans" make my tears well up about following God and walking out in faith further than I could on my own and further than I could imagine.  I do know that today at church my eyes welled up as they spoke about missions.  I don't think it's homesickness.  It used to be homesickness or a desire to run away.  I don't think it's that anymore.  I think there's more to it than that.  And I don't need to keep pursuing more education that costs lots of money, I just need to go.  Obviously I'll need to take some time to prayerfully consider this and see if it's the right way to go.  YWAM has a Discipleship Training School in Thailand called Create, and they have a visual arts for missions program that comes after that.  That is a year long commitment to do both, and completing a DTS is a pre-requisite for the Visual Arts for Missions program.  Cost for the 6 month DTS is about $3000 and the cost for the VAM program is just a little bit more ($3120).  This is money that would need to be raised, but it's something I would like to prayerfully consider.

anxiety

Talking about the future and vague possibilities makes me anxious.  Like, right now I'm breaking down crying.  Sure, there are other factors, but the future thing is what triggered it.  I don't know if it's because I don't like change or because I like knowing what's going to happen and with the future I can't know, but it doesn't bode well with me.  I wonder if I were to unpack this anxiety what sort of trauma I would uncover?  My best guess is that it's related to being uprooted frequently as a child and an extreme dislike of change that I wasn't in control of.  I don't do well with change.

Thoughts to ponder.  Time to sleep, once I can dry my eyes.

today. not a bright shining day.

So, I guess it was sort of my fault, but I woke up not wanting to get out of bed, but having to because need to live, which means need to make money, which means work.  I should have been well rested because I had the last two days off, and a little break in my class, but I'm just tired.  I didn't have coffee.  I didn't eat anything.  I dragged myself out of bed, put on work mandated clothes and drove to work.  I was not in the best of moods and had a headache.  (no coffee, no breakfast, no energy to deal with training anyone at work, but this week we're starting to train a couple new people.)  but I went to work, and work I did, and it wasn't half bad.  I like the new lady we're training.  She's probably about the age of my parents, and not technologically savvy, but she'll catch on.  One of the bosses asked us to, if we had time, do some research on well-known African Americans for Black History Month and get some 11x17 pages with a photo and bio printed and laminated, so we started that project.  She did the research, I helped with the technologically savvy part -- putting it all into Word and formatting it.  I wasn't exactly thrilled about the project, but I let our new hire take the reins and just helped out with the formatting aspect of it.  As is standard, we talked a lot, sort of "getting to know you" sort of stuff, and I likely overshared, which I am prone to do.  I don't feel like a concise sentence ever gets a full idea across.  I share stories, but to give context to the stories I share back stories.  Which sort of leaves me vulnerable and easily annoyed when people respond to my stories in ways I don't anticipate... not a bad thing, but I was in a bad mood, and it didn't help.  The weirdest part was towards the end of the shift she asked me how old I was because she likes the idea of setting me up on a date with her son... who is like 8-9 years older than me and seeing someone who she doesn't think is right for him.  This has left me... confused?  but I guess flattered as well.  Anyway, weird day.  At that point I still had not eaten any food, bad me.  Just had a couple glasses of water, if that.  After work I drove straight to my parent's house to raid their fridge and drink coffee and spent the rest of the day chilling with my mom on the sofa.  I'm such a homebody.

But, moral of the story, I got to thinking about friendships again, and I think that close friendships with people scare me.  I want them, yes, but it's scary to say, "hi, I want to be your friend... not just your friend, but your good friend!"... part of it is that getting to the good friend part takes time.  I've heard that the taking time to build friendships is a monocultural thing, and I was thinking it was so funny that it takes awhile for me, but I think there are walls, that I'm scared of letting someone get close, but I also want people to be close.  I'm full of contradictions and am aware of that, but I'm not sure what to do about it.  I'm thinking about friendships because one of the things I overshared about was how I'm not good at putting myself out there with people.  I like to stay home.  I was arguing why it was a good thing to not live with my parents, because I have anti-social tendencies and would never get out and meet people.  Living with other people my age inspires me to sometimes actually do social things.

Also, I think it's super funny that after admitting that I'm an anti-social homebody and after her mentioning my dry skin (to me an indication that I don't take good care of myself) that she would ask if it was weird that she was thinking about setting me up with her son?  I don't understand.  I guess she likes my character?  I don't understand.

But yes.  Still have a headache, just needed to... something, somewhere.