Next?

By Jennifer Nahrstadt

I have been giving serious time and mental energy attempting to discover what the next chapter of my life might look like. It's making me squirm.

Why? I'm a pragmatic woman, born and raised in the no-nonsense Midwest. I don't want open-endedness. I see no need for long, drawn out periods of consideration or processing.

I must admit that I'm not content. I've had this internal niggling that there is something more I have to offer the world, now that my only son has graduated high school and gone off (603.5 miles off, to be exact) to college. I feel the need to know what is next for me. 

With my personality profile in hand and the conviction of my life coach that the results of said profile are, indeed, accurate - that I am a born leader - now I have to figure out what to do with what I know.

Gulp. 

I'm 47. Who will hire me when I can't even articulate effectively what I feel called to do? Who would follow that kind of leader?

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Suddenly, the story of Moses and his encounter with God at the burning bush interrupts this train {wreck} of thought. Before now, I never really identified with Moses, with his adamant reasons why he could.not.do what God was inviting him to do. Now I get it - Moses was scared out of his mind at the enormity of God's call! I am too.In the midst of this process, all I see is more doubts than direction. 

That's not what God sees.

After God tells Moses to go to Egypt, Moses says, "Who am I?" God replies, "You're with Me." God doesn't even answer Moses' question because it's irrelevant. He goes on to explain that he has anticipated every possible outcome and spells out for him how he will take care of everything that concerns Moses. GOD, not Moses.

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Oh.

When Moses resists seeing himself as even remotely qualified to work with God, what does God ask him? "What's in your hand?" I imagine Moses looking at his staff. God started with what Moses already had and transformed it into a tool he would use to change the future of His people.

What's in my hand?

I don't know where this process is taking me, but I know the One who is leading me through it. He will show up with work to do; by his grace, I already have tools in my hands.Will I join him in the work he is going to do or just offer excuses?  

A born and bred Midwesterner, Jennifer Nahrstadt and her husband Bob now live in Georgia. After seven years in the South, her friends say she still can't say "y'all" convincingly. She works the opening shift at Starbucks, where she gathers life lessons for the book she is writing. Although she doesn't drink coffee, she'll do almost anything for chocolate.