I recall being very young, perhaps six years old, and wearing a pair of hand-me-down denim overalls from my older brother, a train engineer's hat atop my head, and I'm sure a mischievous grin on my face. Someone, whose name I can't remember and whose face is of the same sort of blur, asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I remember looking down and thinking very hard for a full ten seconds and replying that I wanted to be a ballerina. "Well, then," they replied, "You'll have to change your clothes first."

I have wanted to be a great many things, in very particular order: a ballerina, a writer, a librarian, a synchronized swimmer, a veterinarian, a marine biologist, a equine veterinarian, a marine biologist, a doctor, a missionary, a mother, a wife, a writer, an editor, a graphic designer, a church planter, and every once in a while, a veterinarian. But most recently, and most ardently, I have wanted to be obedient above all other things.

I've been home for a few weeks now and the opening question of choice in most conversations has been what I want to do when I finish school. I answer, almost incessantly, that I will have to find an internship somewhere and what I will do when I finish depends almost entirely upon where that internship is to be found. It sounds a little like a cop-out. It sounds a little like a six year old dressed in grease monkey duds declaring she wants to be a pretty dancer. It sounds a little like this 25 year old is as clueless about her future as she was twenty years ago. But I promise you I'm not.

Honestly, I really have no idea what I will do when I finish school. I could find an internship, I could decide that teaching English in China or Tibet is plausible, I could land a great job at some publishing house in New York City, I could move to Portsmouth or Cleveland, I could sell all that I have and give it to the poor, I could figure out cold fusion, or I could just come home. I honestly, really and truly, don't know. All I do know is that whenever there is a question about my future it is quickly answered in these words "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. But since I can't see heaven, I'll just do whatever it is I think you want me to do today."

There is a snatch of conversation I love from Little Women:

Mr. Mayor: [That was] well argued, Miss March, you should have been a lawyer.
Jo: I should have been a great many things Mr. Mayor.

Today I will walk in obedience and grow excited about the possibilities of tomorrow. The Lord is faithful to take a great many things and make one complete thing, and I trust Him to do the same with my future. That is what I want to do when I grow up.