visionary

I’m a visionary. I don’t easily see things pertaining to the now but instead how the future is affected. This frustrates me. I don’t want to be so caught up in how the things I’m doing will affect my future that I miss the joy in what is happening.

My mom has told me from the time I was a chubby, stubborn, 2-year-old that God has something big for me. When I was about 7, I always saw that ‘big thing’ as a future thing. Only adults did big things, right? Of course I though at the time that once you’re big enough to drive, you’re an adult. I’m driving now so obviously this big thing God has planned for me should be clear. It’s not. I wish it was. I wish I could better understand how God is going to use my random (and none very well developed) skills to do something big. I wish I knew how he was going to use the years of violin, the photography, the love of aesthetics, the understanding of people, the sensitivity. I wish I knew what he was going to do with my hesitance to speak – I’m a listener through and through. I wish I knew what he was going to do with the time I've spent surrounded by a bunch of kids.

Sometimes I wish there was one thing I was really great at. That would make that ‘big thing’ so much more understandable. Do you ever feel like that? Kind of like a Jack-of-all-trades? I’m involved with so much but I’m not great at anything. Sure, I've focused on some things – like violin, but I’m not ever going to play at Carnegie Hall. I look around me and I see people who have found their niche. They know what they are good at. They know what their future likely holds because of what they are good at.   

I find it interesting and somewhat ironic that I’m a visionary yet there is no clear (or even somewhat muddy) picture of what my future will look like, what the big thing God has planned for me is. It feels like the ‘big thing’ is always going to be in my future. When I was 7, that big thing was going to happen when I was a young adult. I’m a young adult now but that big thing seems to still be a while away.

I want to understand the preparations I’m doing for the big thing God as planned for me but it doesn't work like that, does it? Sometimes (okay, most of the time) I want to skip ahead to when things actually start happening. Enough with this preparation already! You know that Tangled song that goes something like “when will my life begin?” That’s how I feel much of the time but I have to remember that what I’m doing now – the random stuff that is somehow going to be used in the big thing God has planned for me, is my life. It’s where I am today. Even though I am a visionary, I cannot live in the tomorrow because what is happening today is vital for my tomorrow.