Wednesday, March 12, 2014

MUST BE THIS TALL TO RIDE

You're at an amusement park and you're so freaking excited that you finally get to ride the roller coaster all of your friends have been raving about. You're in line. The anticipation is absolutely killing you! 
You wait and you wait, hours and hours pass, but adrenaline is pumping through you so fast you don't even notice. When you get to the front of the line after much time and patience, you notice a sign that you hadn't seen all the way in the back of the line. 

MUST BE THIS TALL TO RIDE ROLLER COASTER

NO!!!!!!!! You're exactly one inch too short! There's physically nothing you can do. You can't magically grow an inch in a second. You're distraught. You're angry. You feel like you just wasted your time and you're so sad that you don't know which way to turn except back to where you came from. Home


This has been my past three months. I decided to get ahead of the game and I began searching for internships in January. I finally found one in West Palm Beach, Florida. FLORIDA. The sunshine state (just really felt I needed to reiterate that I would be LEAVING Indiana and going to some place warmer). There were several bumps in the road throughout the journey of acquiring this internship and I noticed several moments of miscommunication between me and the organization. The major miscommunication happened exactly 25 hours after I had purchased my plane ticket to fly down over my Spring Break in March and go through drug screens, urine analysis, and fingerprinting before finally being interviewed (which was supposed to be just a formality). I knew that God had a plan and that if I wasn't supposed to go down to Florida, all of this miscommunication would have occurred less than 24 hours before I purchased the ticket; I absolutely would have cancelled my flight otherwise. 

So I ventured down last week to get everything sorted out. I think the worst part about being in Florida for a job interview was that I didn't have a car. Getting from place to place was not fun, walking the Bypass dressed up in a skirt during the heat of the day. The miscommunications continued while in Florida, and I shrugged them off like it wasn't a big deal. I truly felt like I was being called to Florida for the summer and I was going to make this work. And that's when God finally put his hand down on the table and said "Game Over Jess." My interview was cancelled due to an emergency at the organization, and with poor communication, I have yet to be contacted by them again. And I'm not going to chase them. For an unpaid internship that I was making myself available to them for? That I paid $300 in airfare to fly down specifically for them? Yeah. Absolutely not. I believe that was God's way of finally closing the door. And you know what it felt like? Not being tall enough to ride the roller coaster you'd been waiting for hours to ride. 

Am I bitter about the situation? Of course. I think that's acceptable at this point. It's only been a week since it all happened. The one thing that has been hardest for me to shake is the feeling that my thorough planning well in advance (January) has been for nothing. Those three months were absolutely wasted. I was trying to avoid scrambling at the end of the semester to find an internship or job, and here I am in March, with six weeks left of school. I'm almost out of time and I'm back at square one against my will.
So where am I headed to now you ask? Well. Like I said earlier in my analogy, when you've wasted all your time and you're so sad that you don't know which way to turn except back to where you came from. So I'm headed back home. And maybe that's okay. Maybe that's where I need to be this summer. 

God's a mysterious guy. He's got so much up His sleeve. I just wish He'd show me a glimpse of what He's got in store for me once in a while. But what fun would that be? I'm trying to remember to be thankful for the things He has shown me already. Yesterday, one of my professors was walking out of his office with his family. His little eight month old daughter I know from the nursery on Sundays. I was so excited to see her! She smiled at me and blew me a kiss and my professor goes, "Jeez Jess, I think she remembers you." And as they walked away, I couldn't stop smiling. And then I realized - that's why I'm doing this. One thing that God has shown me is my undeniable passion for children. Right now, I just have to keep remembering that and trusting in His timing. 

Stay Beautiful <3