Detours.

In Portland, my home is not located very conveniently. It is a ten minute drive from my house to the nearest store, fifteen to church and nearly thirty to my high school. There is pretty much one way in and one way out.

While I was home during spring break, they closed our way in and out to do construction and make the highway flow better. And I'm sure in the long run this will make the normally congested highway move more smoothly, but for now it just looks like an inconvenient, giant waste of money. Detours take drivers to an exit to the north or south, but the extra time it would take was enough to deter me from leaving the house too much during break.

I am the first to admit I don't like change. I don't like the unknown. Not in the way that changing classes quarter to quarter gets me down- but those larger, LIFE changes. Those I don't like so much.

One big thing I learned in Cambodia was trust. Trust God, it's OK to not have everything figured out yet. It's OK to not feel ready. But letting that empty space stop you is not an option, because as someone before me said, life happens between the trapeze bars. I came back from Cambodia confident in that knowledge. But everyday that graduation draws closer, I find myself trying to slow down time, avoiding topics of the future, and my inner monologue keeps chanting: I'm not ready yet!

But no matter how many dances I do to slow the rotation of the earth, or how much I procrastinate on my senior paper, the end of my college career is coming. This big lesson I learned in Cambodia needs to be applied and reapplied day in and day out.

I'm not sure where I will be after I graduate. I still have some time to figure it out and I know that God's "no" is not a rejection, but a redirection. No matter how inconvenient and time consuming the detour, as long as I keep moving, keep laughing, and keep dreaming, I will end up where I am supposed to . Because nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

Thomas Edison said: Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.