such a simple question. when you're little it's a fun one, because your livelihood doesn't depend on it or anything. then you actually do grow up, and the question is terrifying, mostly because you either don't have an answer or don't know how to make the answer happen.
i was so much more sure of myself when i was little.
when i was 5, i wanted to be somebody's wife.(not that i don't want that anymore, but it was funnier back then when i didn't have any other option in my mind and i was positive that was all i would ever need to be)
when i was 6ish, i wanted to be a vet.
when i was 8, i wanted to be an olympic gymnast.
when i was about 9, and on until i was about 13, i wanted to be a vet again. i was pretty serious about it until they killed my cat, then i decided vets are evil people and i couldn't be one.
and finally, kind of overlapping the vet thing, when i was 14 i wanted to join ballet magnificat. and as much as mrs debbie assured me that i would NEVER make it, i was sure that it was what God wanted and that it would happen. but after screwing up both of my knees, being told enough times that it didn't matter how much i loved dancing for Jesus i just sucked too much to even audition, moving 30 minutes away from my old studio, and quitting dance, that dream just kind of died.
and with all of that, there was always an assumed "and in the summers i'll work at camp."
starting when i was about 14, i thought about going to new york film academy and being a director(the idea of writing sitcoms was floating in the back of my head a little too). i kind of wanted to be an actress, but in much the same way as i'd rather take pictures than be in them, the idea of creating movies, being behind the camera where people couldn't see me, was better to me. on the side of whatever i ended up doing, i wanted to be a critic in my spare time. and after i quit dance, gained 15 pounds and knew that ballet mag was no longer any kind of possible, i seriously thought i would be in new york after i graduated. movies were my life. if i wasn't watching them, i was writing about them, debating them on imdb, or just thinking about them in some way. it didn't matter what kind of effect something had on me, or how much my parents told me not to see any certain one, or how much some of them went against what i claimed to believe. and i didn't care about school, since i figured NYFA wouldn't look at my grades, they'd just want to know that i knew movies.
but God started shaking this in the summer of 2008. i've told the story too many times, go find it in one of my older posts.
my senior year i took mrs montgomery's film class. besides learning how to write a paper(being homeschooled, i had never written one until that semester), and getting to watch/discuss/review movies and call it school, i learned so much about how movies affect the way we think and look at the world. i saw how twisted a lot of my thinking had become.
side note: "hollywood worldviews" by brian godawa is one of those must-read-before-you-die books. such good stuff. and any of you homeschoolers that i still talk to that go to the resource center should take that class the first chance you get.
so, over the course of that semester, while God was still working on me with the whole "go to csu, major in psych and learn how to help those unfortunate kids that you love", i threw out the NYFA dream(although semi secretly, i'd still LOVE to go take a 4 week workshop just for fun) and decided to follow God's dream instead. the only problem was, i didn't know what that was yet. and it's still kind of illusive.
so. what DO i want to be? well, the beauty part is that that's not even a question i care about anymore. i want to know, what does God want me to be when i grow up?
i don't actually know. but it makes me think of camp. in a bunch of ways, but the one i'm talking about now is megan's painting on tuesday nights. what she would do was she'd have all these pieces of a picture, kind of like a puzzle. she'd paint the outlines on the mixed up pieces, and the more you saw, the better idea you had of what it would come out as. when she was finished, she'd unscramble them and put them in the right order so it made the camp logo.
i think God's plan is like that. He paints one piece at a time until finally, we have all the pieces, we just need Him to show us what to make with those pieces. i'm at that point. i can see that there's something awesome in His head for me, i just don't know how all these are supposed to add up.
i know that i love Jesus, i love people, i'm fascinated with understanding how people think, and i love listening and helping people. but i also know i'm not meant for counseling, at least not in the conventional way. (i'm too empathetic, i would always be mad at someone or depressed about something if i had people telling me their problems all day)
i LOVE figuring out how people learn, i think my fellow ADD sufferers are the most interesting people in the world, and i would so love to help them understand how they think so they can learn better, but that couldn't be all i did.(my most recent ADD doctor asked if his job sounded appealing to me, i told him "no, it's boring and you had to go to school for too long, and most people don't understand themselves as well as i do and i don't have patience with people like that." he laughed for like a whole minute, but i meant every word i said)
i love kids and i love camp. i have this great big passion for kids that aren't loved. i would love to help families learn how to love each other, but you need a master's for that and i'm not a good enough student to handle grad school, plus...i just don't WANT to be in school more than the necessary 4 years.
and somewhere in there, i wanna go to guatemala and love on all the orphans. just for a little while, like less than a month. but i'd like it if God had that in His calendar somewhere for me.
in all honesty, my 5 year old dream is still the one i'd have in a perfect world. but since i need a backup, i may as well keep looking for something that includes everything else i'm good at.
can i just work at camp all my life?
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