Future Thoughts

I often wonder what I am going to do with my life, or where I will do it. I have an undergraduate and graduate degree that pointed me toward vocational ministry, or full time church work. The Lord Christ pointed me in another direction after being given the chance to do that work for a year.

I found that what I really want is a job that I can do that has good routine and what I enjoy doing. What do I enjoy doing? Teaching, training, instructing, guiding, etc. I decided that if I was going to have a career I needed to set to and get another degree to enable that career to happen. So now I am pursuing a M.Ed with the goal of being a high school science teacher. Science is something that I have always enjoyed and would love the chance to teach others.

I have two years at least until I can become certified to teach "Earth Science" here in Virginia. Then I have another four classes (two semesters) until the M.Ed is completed. Hopefully the last four classes will be completed part-time while I teach at a local high school.

This is my short term goal, to get another degree that leads to a career. Long term I have been wishy washy on, as it comes to the where. The what is pretty clear to me, teach until I retire. I want to be completely debt free, including cars and houses. I am within a few months of being credit card debt free, what I hope to be the start of a new way of doing finances.

The where is the hard part. I have considered going back to Omaha and living around family. This is for sure what my sister would have me do, however I am torn. My sister is like and unlike me.

We are both military brats, we both deal with friendships in different ways. For many years we had to make friends and leave friends. The local youth pastor in Germany was always coming back to how to be and make good friends, as well as how to let go. When my sis and I grew up our response to that lifestyle became apparent.
She has trouble keeping friends when she moves. She will make new friends wherever she goes (something I struggle with) and forget about friends that she had in the place she left (something I don't struggle with).

I am just the opposite, I have developed three close friendships (three married couples) across the country. Everywhere I move, I tend to develop many heartwarming acquaintances, but rarely friends. I unconsciously prevent myself from forming any close friends, because I have already got good friends across the country. We suffer from the same problem, with different coping strategies. Its kind of funny really.

Where is all this talk about friendship leading? Well I just got back from a visit to a few of my close friends in the Mid-West, and all I want to do at the moment is finish my education and career so I can transfer to be with them again. I have never been more happy with where I lived than when I lived next door to my best friend. I love to visit and play with his kids, then talk the night away with him and his wife. His was the first family where I truly felt like an Uncle.

He an I were discussing a dream that I had, far off and near impossible, of moving back to Cedarville. If I could get a job teaching science at a local school, and simultaneously get a job as a RD at Cedarville, then my goals and desires would be mixed and complete.

That is but one of many scenarios that pop into my head. They range from moving back to Cedarville, to staying here in NOVA for years with my parents to pay my own home someday with cash. I am not sure where the Lord is going to lead me, I just know that he has me here working on my next degree. I am looking forward to where he will lead in the future, and who my best friends pick to be my next wife. (I gave them permission to arrange a marriage for me, God knows they would pick better than I would.)