When life doesn’t turn out like you expect

Following the Call

It was supposed to be a vacation. Five days in Lincoln, a friend’s graduation, and flying home. Then God stepped in and flipped my life upside down.

The first inkling came when I stepped on campus after having been graduated for four years.

I had been around the world, task forced, and started to settle down in my hometown, but as soon as I set foot on Union soil I felt like I belonged here somehow. Odd.

Things got weirder as I spent time on campus. Over the course of several days, I received numerous comments about Guaranteed Education and the Physician Assistant program, neither of which had ever seriously crossed my mind. As the weekend approached, I even found myself somewhat softening to the idea.

Wait, what happened to being done with school?!?

The fire ramped up at church that weekend. While the sermon was aimed at graduates and their “open doors” for the future, they ironically weren’t even present. All the more emphasis, however, on the “open door” standing right in front of me.

It was becoming blatantly clear what God had in mind; too bad it was everything but what I wanted to do. Why does God’s will always have to be 180 degrees different from mine?

My friend pounded the last nail into the coffin. “You could stay for a summer class.” I was packing to leave, and the idea seemed crazy.

Take off work for an entire month, so I could take (probably fail) the second half of a chemistry class I attended seven years ago. It would never work.

Fast-forward a year and a half. It did work. Somehow, I passed the class. Somehow, things at work were spaced just right so I could afford to be gone for an entire month. Somehow all the pieces fit together perfectly. Yet as amazing as it was, it wasn’t a mystery to me. I serve a God who is greater than chance.

The calling of God, though often unexpected, isn’t unplanned. Every detail is set in place ahead of time, waiting to be claimed by faith. Through all life’s uncertainness, there is peace if we can learn to trust Him.

If we decide to trust Him.

Faith is like a muscle. With resistance, it grows strong; without, it wastes away.

Daily we are given opportunities to see God work, and, whether we like it or not, what we do with those opportunities will eventually determine how we react in the bigger tests. Heeding the little calls, strange as they may seem sometime form in us the habit of actually responding when called to action.

Submission to the Spirit in the little things also allows us benefits not immediately seen in the larger tests: viewing the results of our faith. Since the small things are so immediate to life in the present, we often see results right away.

Thus we are trained to see beyond the present.

In the little things and the big, God calls us to trust Him. We have to choose. We have to act. He’s in the business of leading our lives for a reason. The more I see of my path, the more amazed I become. Coming here wasn’t just for vacation.


Ginger Hany is a senior studying biomedical science.