"Debt" or "Job searching at home, part 1"

Ahh, the job search. I decided i'd be a good little college student and throw myself into it over spring break. I had a few prospects going in, not to mention what I thought was a pretty solid backup plan just in case. Well, truth be told, prospects meant places I had thought about once or twice right before falling asleep at night in a sort of "wouldn't it be cool..." sort of vein. I also thought that googling "Christian Animation Studios" would provide me with all sorts of options. It doesn't. Try it. And while I went into the process believing that the whole world was open for options, I hit mid-week feeling discouraged, hopeless, and resigned to living with my parents for a very long time. There was definitely a low point, where I just couldn't understand how so much debt could be so big of an obstacle to a future which I had committed wholly to the Lord. I couldn't understand why I couldn't just pick up and move on a whim to a prospective town where I'd be perfectly happy to wait tables or something if a studio job wasn't available. I mean, if that's what God is leading me to do, there's nothing that can stop me! I must be free to follow the Holy Spirit wherever he leads, living off of just what I need for the day, doing the Lord's work. I get so frustrated with the attitude that after college, you need to get a job doing work in your field of study, make enough money to secure your future, and focus on what you need for yourself. You know, the overly-pragmatic, "depend on YOU!" attitude. If I have a solid job offer in my field, living at home, and making tons of money, the world says I'm crazy if I want to wait tables in Colorado!

So, I did what any frustrated college girl does when faced with a tough road. I asked my Daddy.

I knew he had a colorful life after high school. He smuggled Bibles into communist European countries for a while, traveled back and forth between Europe and the states a few times, freeloaded off of friends' family, lived basically how I would like to live my years of "freedom" after graduating. Turns out he has a pretty amazing story when it comes to trusting in the Lord to provide. But as he was relating this to me, he made one thing clear throughout the whole thing. While he maybe didn't know how he was going to support himself day to day at times, he did not have any debt. I started to learn about the Lord's provision. My Dad had a Christian mentor who took him in like a son and sponsored him through work right after high school, the Bible smuggling, and even Bible College, to an extent.

I started to learn about the difference between worldly wisdom and common sense. Open up the Bible randomly to Proverbs and you will probably find the subjects folly and money talked about quite frequently. A lot of the times in the same verse. And God really started to show me how serving and following his will can really look. I was getting upset because I'm anxious to serve the Lord in a capacity that I cannot fulfill yet. Having tons of debt feels like a stone weighing down every move and hindering the freedom that I KNOW I have in Christ, when it should look like a tool God could be using to teach me a lot about responsibility, seeking Him, and waiting. Not to mention all that could change while I'm paying things off, and how much I can witness the Lord provide with all these gobs of cash that need provided for!

So, at the end of this, the firm back up plan isn't so firm, Christian animation studios are virtually nowhere to be found (I have one on my list of prospects. Not even Adventures in Odyssey is animated by a Christian studio.), and I have to actively tell myself each and every day that I'm not in control of my own destiny, as the world would tell me. That is one piece of worldly wisdom that absolutely MUST be discarded before moving forward with any of this. Seeking hard after the Lord is all I can do, and this mountain of debt is much better placed at His feet than on my mind in worry.