How My Life Drastically Changed

By: Missionary Team

By 17, I had my life set. I had always been one of those people who liked to have it all together. Control was my best friend. When I was a junior, I made the decision to pursue Occupational Therapy after high school. I looked at a couple of different colleges, but to save money, I planned to attend a community college. This way, I could live at home and work at the same time to make some money as I studied. As soon as I made this decision, I made it impossible for me to change these plans. Once I knew the next step from high school, I could soon start brainstorming ideas for my future beyond.

I slipped into this dangerous cycle of maintaining control and creating future plans for myself. I allowed myself to continuously daydream and visualize about my future timeline which was nonexistent in that moment. Each thought built off of the one before, and so I had managed to make the next ten years of my life a reality in my mind. I was pretty confident in the plans I had made, but something just felt a little off. Deep in my heart, I knew something just wasn’t right.

About two months before I graduated from high school, I made the decision to take a year off of school to be a full-time missionary. I did the complete opposite of what I had told myself. I wasn’t supposed to change my plans, but I did. Before this, I despised the idea of a gap year. I didn’t understand how some people could do it. I encouraged others to take time off if they really needed it, but I was terrified of the idea. I feared that I would forget everything I had learned in high school. As I took academics very seriously, this was the scariest choice that I could make.

Again, my control issues wanted attention. However, the opportunity to become a missionary was quick and spontaneous. It was something that I had never considered, and it grew more attractive as I continued thinking about it. There was something different about it. Before I knew it, I had applied and got accepted into the program. For some reason, I was much more excited about this decision than my previous plan.

I pretty much made my choice right off the bat; I was confident, which didn’t happen very often. I set aside a few days before I committed to really sit and pray about what I was about to do. I remembered that I had wanted to really grow in my faith after high school, which seemed difficult to do with college. I desired to serve as well. At the time I looked into the missionary program, I had been researching volunteer jobs for the summer. As I sat on the edge of my bed, I truly felt God calling me to greater things than what I had planned for.

I learned quite a bit from this experience. First, my plans are not my own. God calls us to Himself, which means saying yes to His Will for our life. God guides us to the vocations that are going to allow our love levels to max out for Him and others. He knew I wasn’t going to be happy going to college right away, I needed more than that: I needed time to grow with Him.

Second, I had control issues. I had major control issues. As this came pretty early in my teenage years, it was hard to break as I went through high school. In fact, I didn’t really get over this control until I had made the decision to be a missionary. That was the first taste of freedom I had received in a long time. This is what God longs for: our desire to let Him have control, to be able to experience his never-changing freedom and love through our “yes” to Him. I thought it would have been challenging for me to give up everything I had planned for two years, but it was freakishly easy. It was so simple because, deep in my heart, I knew I wanted more; He wanted to give me more.

Christ had spent his entire being just so that I could have a relationship with Him and the Father. He bridged the gap between God and man by His death. At the moment when this idea of being a missionary was presented to me, I believe God gave me the graces to say yes to His plans. It’s crazy what discernment can do because I used two years of my life planning for things that never happened. Not only did this teach me a bunch about control, but it taught me that I am a daughter of the Father, and He has so much more in store for me than I have for myself.