It's asked by friends and family who (I think) genuinely care about me and what's going on in my life. Which is why it's so difficult for me to answer.
If I'm being honest, the last few weeks of this internship have been incredibly difficult for me. I was hating my job in the kitchen because I kept screwing up and I didn't even want to be in the kitchen I wanted to hang out with youth. And I couldn't hang out with the youth because either they were gone on a trip or I was more needed in the kitchen. And I was angry about it all. After I spoke to my boss about it and received encouragement and some advice, I felt better. Until the next day when I lost my wallet and then the day after that when I wasn't able to stay within budget when buying all the food I needed for the Learning Center and the day after that when I lost my water bottle.
I found myself moping around wondering why it sucked so much when I was doing exactly what God told me to do. If it was God's plan for me why was it terrible?
It took me weeks to work through all of that. Which is why I haven't blogged about any of my experiences; I haven't felt like I've had any experiences that were worth writing about.
By the grace of God I was able to overcome most of those struggles. But I still found myself struggling with one other thing. That pesky question of "How's your internship going?"
I have friends that are doing incredible things with their summer. They're camp counselors. They're in another country doing missions. They're at an intense discipleship camp with all their friends. And I see pictures being posted and I hear stories of God's amazing work being done in them and through them and then I look at myself and the work that I'm doing; I don't have any amazing stories or any great spiritual revelations. When people ask me that question, they don't want to hear about how I lost my wallet and everything sucks. They expect to hear about how great of a time I'm having and how I've seen God work in amazing ways and my life will never be the same after this.
And I know that when I go back to college I'm going to be surrounded by these people who have incredible stories to tell from their summer and I won't know what to contribute.
Recently, though, I've learned some things.
The first is that no work for the Lord should be done for your personal glory. It was incredibly prideful and selfish to hate the job just because it won't give me any interesting stories to tell. I'm envying the experiences that God didn't want for me right now, failing to look for joy and purpose in the work that God has for me. I was led to the book of Ecclesiastes because I figured if you're pretty bummed out and feel like everything sucks, Ecclesiastes will understand you.
Ecclesiastes 3:12-13 says, "I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they life; also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil- this is God's gift to man."
God's gift to man is to enjoy not only leisure but also work. I was choosing to hate this work that is God's gift to me. And when I am doing what God wants me to be doing, I should be joyful and confident that I'm doing good work. Good because He has called me to do it.
The second thing I've learned is that from the time Esther was crowned queen to the end of the book 6 years pass! I don't know why, but I thought it was like... six months or something like that. Go read Esther all the way through, but think about all the time that spanned between the events. What was Esther doing during all this time? Well the Bible doesn't tell us. But you can be certain that she was continuously learning more about God and ready to do his will. She was just chilling, doing her queen thing and also following the Lord.
Similar to Esther, I had been reading Acts. A whole lot of amazing stuff happens in Acts. A lot of time passes as well; the Bible doesn't tell us exactly how much time the apostles spent in each city. But I know they didn't just show up, preach a sermon, and move on to the next city. What were they all doing in between their miracles and amazing messages? Well, following God and learning more about him. Always ready to do what He prompted them to do. Just because I don't have an amazing story to tell, it does not mean that I'm not doing good work.
So I think I'm really in one of these in between moments. If my life were a Bible story, this summer might look like, "And she stayed in Denver for two months before moving on to Greeley." But it is no less important. Following God faithfully is not always going to be amazing noteworthy things happening. But that doesn't mean it isn't good or worthwhile. I need to just keep doing my thing and following Jesus, waiting for Him to tell me what His next big move is.
Much love,
Amanda
