The Unexpected Blessing of False Starts (9/10/2008)

You know how when you were a kid you came up with these phenomenal ideas that would undoubtedly change the very course of your life—if you could just stick with them? Like remember when you suddenly decided to make everyone call you by your middle name? For at least a day, maybe two, you refused to answer to your first name in hopes that you could effectively change your name and your destiny. But when it didn’t work right away, you lost interest and forgot about it. Or the time when you realized how cool it would be to be ambidextrous, so you practiced writing with your non-dominant hand and ended up with spaghetti all over yourself. Yeah, that lasted all of twenty minutes.

I have found that this desire to write our own destinies, to force ourselves into an ill-fitted mold, doesn’t necessarily go away as we grow older. We can be perfectly content one day and frantic for change the next. In my case, I’m a chronic reorganizer and redecorator. I’m always looking for a better way to arrange the kitchen cupboards or a better configuration for the furniture. I move things around, put new pictures in the frames, recover chairs, and look for that one special item that will pull the look together. It drives my change-phobic husband batty. But this constant feeling that I need to improve upon and perfect things has led to a very important turning point in my life—one of those destiny things.

A couple years ago, I decided to go back to school. Hoping to be able teach writing at the local community college, I enrolled in a program in literacy and pedagogy at Michigan State University. But after one and a half semesters I realized that this was not the right path. I had had just three classes (not even three really, since I was only a few weeks into my second semester) when I decided that I would drop out.

Not normally one to drop out of anything, this was a big step for me. Not only had I put money, time, and effort into this program, I had told a lot of people I was doing it. I had gotten it into my head that another degree would get me a higher paying job and that it would bring me prestige and that I should not be content with where God had put me. It wasn’t that I was unfulfilled in my life—after all, I have a great job, a beautiful home, a loving husband, a new baby, and satisfying hobbies and volunteer work. It was that I felt that I shouldn’t feel fulfilled. I had contracted a bad case of a common American malady: ladderclimberitis. Despite the fact that I had everything I needed, I thought I should always be striving for more—more money, more stature, more stuff, more letters after my name.

But after a lot of prayer, soul searching, and discussion with the important people in my life, I realized that I didn’t really want to get another degree at this point in time. It was, in the end, not that difficult of a decision. I realized that teaching in college was an old dream of mine, and that I didn’t necessarily want that anymore. During the time I was in school I found that all I could think about was what I wished I had time for—gardening, finishing the mural I had started at church, visiting with family and friends, and working on my creative writing. I had time for all of these things before I went back to school. I just hadn’t realized that these were things that made my life fulfilling.

I was left to wonder why I wasted eight months of my life working on a degree I wouldn’t get. But I soon realized that that time was not wasted at all. If I hadn’t found myself on the wrong road I might never have realized that I had been on the right road before turning off. My restless, discontented spirit would never have recognized that the road I was on was the one God had laid out for me.

I have found a new appreciation for the false starts in my life. Each of us experiences these times when we think we see so clearly the path God wants us to tread, whether it be in relationships, career choices, or even where to live, and it turns out differently than we expect. One of the reasons I was sure that I was supposed to go back to school was that we happened to move to a city right by a prestigious university that had a program that seemed ideal for me, and there was a community college right down the road where I could teach. Surely, I thought, God must have been orchestrating that. And when I started having doubts I was in turmoil. How could I know what I was really supposed to be doing? I felt so aimless and lost.

It’s easy to beat ourselves up over these seemingly bad decisions and wonder how we could have been so dense. But maybe, just maybe, God wanted us to spend some time on the wrong road in order that we might appreciate the right path once we get back on it. Perhaps those times when we get it in our heads to change everything, to become ambidextrous or change our names, are God’s way of helping us to be happy with who and where we are.

With my newfound sense of purpose and contentment, I’m looking forward to the days, months, and years ahead, when I can be sure I’m going the right way for the right reason. But if later in life I find myself on a side track again, I think the way back to the main road will be easier to find and easier to take.