that was then... this is now.

10 months.
10 months ago i was just returning from Romania. i had no idea what i was going to do with my life. i had no idea what i wanted to do or where i wanted to go. i wanted to get back on the first plane to Romania. but what did i do... i hopped in my car, packed it up and drove to pennsylvania. with me, it seems like when I am running from God's plan I either go BIG or go home. i chose to go BIG. we all know how that turned out for me...

9 months.
9 months ago i had just come home from PA, still wondering what i was going to do... i left my car packed and drove to the only place that had grounded me for the past four years, a place that was my home. Grace Bible College. i wanted to get a job and live with a friend. i had every intention of doing so. i came to visit my students and that is when they asked me...

8 months.
8 months ago i moved to newaygo to be the youth director at Grace Bible Church.

i have lived here for 8 months.
i survived my first school year as not a volunteer helping out in the youth ministry department at a megachurch, but as a youth pastor.

i successfully led a group of high school students to grow closer to God in the past 8 months.

in the past 8 months i have felt happier, heartbroken, loved, valued, and stressed than my entire senior year of college.

i have seen the nitty gritty, dirty laundry, utter pain of my students.

i have seen them worship holding nothing back.

i have experienced a community, a family of high school students that i didn't know was even possible.

i have had to make hard decisions.

i have had to discern when to be a leader and when to be a friend.

my students have been the best thing for me.

they remind me every week that God has put a passion in my heart for the teenagers of this generation.

they remind me God is God and no matter how much i want them to change, the choices they make are their own and that is between them and God.

i have never been so challenged spiritually, so tired from spending hours in tears and prayer, and so encouraged that maybe i am making a difference.

the other day as i was discussing some options with a friend i told him that i couldn't believe i was a youth pastor.
i couldn't believe i finished my first school year here.
i couldn't believe this is what i'm doing with my life and his response to me was "yeah, but you are doing it."

six simple words.

if you had asked me one year ago what i thought i would be doing, my answer would not in a million years have been being a youth pastor. let alone, working at a church that i love, who forgives me when i mess up, who loves me for me, whose vision is the same as mine.

but i am. i'm doing it.

who knows how long i will be here... something big is coming. i know it.
but whatever the change, whenever it comes, i know that i will be ready because my times here is preparing me to do greater things than i could even think of.