Perspective

"This, too, shall pass." It's true, you know. Regardless of whether you absolutely love your life stage or are counting the seconds until you can move on, life cycles are such that you won't remain in one for long (if you are able to put your life in perspective, which is admittedly difficult).

Tonight I sat down, peeked at my bank account, expenses, and loans, and crunched some numbers. It was an awful enough situation considering the fact that calling my math skills remedial would be an act of Mother Theresa-like generosity (and Tiger Woods-style deception), and the stress was compounded by the fact that x seemed to always equal either zero or negative. I think I was taught that x should always be a positive integer, but apparently life does not always imitate math.

My response, after I made my mom double-check and approve the numbers on the page, stopped just short of sackcloth and ashes. And I do mean just short. I even rent (rended? did rend?) some clothing, albeit the clothing I am currently sewing that needed a good rending job to make me look like less of a linebacker and more like a female.

In short, I freaked out. As I explained to my mom, I had anticipated that my life could be easy now (living off loans) and hard later (paying off loans) or hard now (working in school) and easy later (paying off loans early). I had not mentally prepared a category for "Life: Hard now, harder later!"

After a good hour of slathering myself in self-pity (with truly unfortunate results to the complexion) I recognized two facts that had somehow eluded me in my fear:

1) I had made no effort to see where God fits into all this
2) I'm being my own selfish pig, as the book title goes

1) My freak out was due to the fact that I had lost a sense of perspective. My focus is on my life, and how I want it run, and what I want to get out of it. A focus on God changes that instantly. I don't need life to be debt-free, stress-free, or hardship-free to be effective for Christ and the opportunities He has given me for service. Furthermore, if I truly seek Him, I will know for certain that this time will not be wasted. He's pretty economical when it comes to time.

2) Oh, and did I mention that I'm being an ungrateful wretch? What a disheartening news story: "Debt-free graduate of expensive private university gets an emotional allergic reaction to the loans she's taking out to attend the graduate school of her choice which will prepare her perfectly for what she wants to do in life." Not to mention that I have a wonderful family, I grew up in one of the best countries in the world while simultaneously claiming citizenship to the "free-est" (most free) countries in the world; that living without proper shelter is a form of recreation to me (maybe not always the most enjoyable recreation, but we'll save the camping stories for later). I have never gone without food or clothing. I'm more or less healthy. I have been blessed to know some of the best sorts of people on this earth. And I just finished my annual read-through of Pride and Prejudice. In short, I am blessed, blessed, blessed.

One of the things that had initially saddened me was that my lack of funds will prevent me from some of the hobbies I had hoped to take up (ie: sewing. You wouldn't think that it would be expensive, would you?). But that's ok. Instead, I can focus on learning piano and guitar (pursuits I have taken up and given up frequently over the past few years), sing and write more, and enjoy the process of learning to develop relationships well. Take that, Sallie Mae.