Like most people, I will probably never forget September 11, 2001. After getting out of my 9 a.m. Poetry class, I had an hour to kill before my 11 AM class, Advanced New Testament, I headed to the nearest computer room around 9:50 a.m. to spend that time as I always did: chatting away with my then-fiancé right up until 10:58 or if I lost track of time, 11:05 where I would then run to New Testament. That morning, Adam had stunning news for me: terrorists just crashed two airplanes into the twin towers and a third into the pentagon, killing over 3,000 people and decimating the Twin Towers--and my happy little world. Adam's first thought was to get in his car and drive all the way to Ashland, Ohio to take me "home" with him so I would be "safe". For a crazy moment, I desperately wished he hadn't come to his senses somewhere outside the Kalispell courthouse. I wasn't really in danger, of course, but we both knew what a teacher in high school once told me: as the state capital, my hometown, Columbus, Ohio, was a potential terrorist target. The dumb part? Ashland is about 80 miles away from home. While being 2000 miles from your fiancé at such a time is difficult emotionally, it wouldn't make much of a difference in terms of physical safety.
Nevertheless, it shattered our view of the world. Such times often put a sense of "hurry!" on a person as you realize how short life can be. We were no different. Adam was working on his second year of community college and at the time he planned to transfer to my school the following year. This had seemed like a terribly long time to go without seeing your fiancé, so I had already broken my poor mother's heart by telling her all I wanted for Christmas was to be 2000 miles away from her. After 9/11, instead of terribly long, it was suddenly an eternity away.
In the mist of this, I began to experience burn out. Mind you, I did finish that semester with a 3.3 grade point average. It wasn't that I couldn't do the work. I just didn't want to. I had gotten into the meat of my Religion/Creative writing double major, so my course work added to the problem by requiring a ton of papers, the one part of my schooling I dreaded (and procrastinated on) the most. In fact, I had like four final papers all due within days of each other and maybe one final exam. Completing my course work was like pulling teeth and it took much prayer and coaching from Adam to force myself to apply myself to completing my work. Part of the problem was a simple question: what was it for?
For me, this was an earth shattering question. From the seventh or eighth grade on, I had one goal in life: A college diploma. I scared my high-school graduate mother witless with that announcement. How would they ever pay for it? With the help of a government funded program which helped change my life by giving me a bible the Christmas I was fourteen or fifteen, we had managed so far to put me through two and half years of college. Since I entered college with twelve credits and had packed each semester full, I was a semester ahead and would be actually a college Senior come December. So now, just a year short of my goal, I suddenly couldn't remember why it was so important. A lonely child (and a lonely teenager), I filled the void in my life by reading everything I could get my hands on and throwing myself into my school work. One of my unconscious reasons for even attending college, I later realized, was I didn't know what else to do with my life. By the fall of 2001, that old void had been filled with two loves-Jesus and Adam Graham.
In the midst of this, as well as financial and power struggles with my parents, God began impressing on me an idea I found ludicrous--to quit school and move to Montana. Since I was a semester ahead, I tried to reason with this, saying, okay. I'll take next semester off and spend it working and living in Montana near Adam (not WITH him, mind you, we planned to get me an apartment or such nearby). Then we'll both go back to Ashland, finish our degrees, and get married. By November, though outwardly I continued with this plan, it was growing evident it wouldn't actually happen that way. I'd already seen from the last summer how God had a way of changing our plans. There would be no compromise. If I took the step of withdrawing from school and moving to Montana, there would be no getting back on track with my plan.
This is when I really started to pray. Everyone I actually told this to (I'm ashamed to say most of my college friends didn't find out about this until the last week or so of school) didn't believe God had anything to do with this "insane" idea, but was just one love-sick burned-out college student considering throwing away a B.A for an M.R.S. Part of me agreed with this. In fact, when I prayed, I explained patiently to that still small voice telling me to do just that he couldn't possibly be telling me this and why. He just kept on telling me to leave school and move to Montana. Eventually, though no one else believed us, Adam and I did begin to actually believe God was telling me to do this.
That is when I came to a difficult decision: would I do things my way and find a way to finish a degree I wasn't sure I had any use for or would I obey and go to Montana? It was frustrating to be so close to my goal to have God redirecting me like this, even with all he did to prepare me to make the right decision. In the end, I did obey, though still trying to kid myself I would come back to finish my schooling the fall semester of '02. Little did I know by then I would be a married woman with no plans of ever going back to Ashland and just a faint regret the devil spent about a year stirring up before I finally rebuked that feeling away.
Ironically, despite the reactions of all my friends and loved ones, when I later had to explain my actions to my father-in-law, he just shook his head and pronounced in a scolding fatherly voice I had no business in college in the first place, in his opinion, because I had no career plans and no practical use for the degrees I was studying for. While God used my college days for His purposes and I'll never regret them, God wasn't even consulted on whether I should enroll in school and between the two of us, the only one who ever wanted a college degree hanging on my wall was me. Looking back now, what God told me was much in the same vein as what Jesus said to the rich young ruler when he told him to "sell all that thou hast and come follow me." He wanted me, for once in my life, to leave behind what I wanted and actually let him plan my steps, naturally asking me to give up something I once valued every bit as much as the rich young ruler valued his riches. Unlike the rich young ruler, though, I was ready to forsake my idol and go.
Lessons: Like my friends and family, had the rich young ruler obeyed Jesus, his would have called him crazy and told him he was making a huge mistake. Most of the time, when someone does something like drop out of school and get married, they may very well be doing just that, but when you've prayed and you've sought God and have received in the depths of your soul the call to go, no matter how crazy it might seem, you must go. God has his reasons even if we can't see them. If God's really calling you to go, not only will he make a way, he will give you peace in your heart that you're doing the right thing, and His Word will confirm the action.
God's ways are not our ways, nor are his priorities necessarily our priorities. Not everything God tells us to do will make sense to us and he may very well ask us to do something we and everyone around us thinks is a huge mistake (though he will NEVER contradict the commandments given in the Holy Scriptures). That said, not everything God tells us to do will be horribly offensive to us. Every now and again, he tells us to do something we wanted to do, but were afraid to do. Why does he do this sort of thing? Sometimes, like in my situation, he's asking us to cast down an idol. Just as often, as was also the case for me, he's asking us to take a leap of faith, thereby testing whether he really is the Lord of our life and if we're willing to let him direct us.