Are we there yet?

Amazing how things like going back to school have the ability to reduce you to your six year old self. When all you lived for was the weekends and the vacation days. I find myself continually counting the days until I have some time off. Constantly checking with other students to make sure I have the correct number of days counted, because I might have made a mistake. What if I counted more? What if I counted less? Oh, the horrors of having an extra, unplanned for day! Its hard when I am so close to getting out of here, but still a semester away. Hell, I can barely concentrate on the semester at hand! I have a paper rewrite that was due yesterday and I still haven't even started. I pulled it up on Tuesday night after the finals were over and just ended up starring blankly at it for a while before shutting down my laptop and going to bed. Again I did the same last night and today. So I am still no closer to my goal.

Daily I am telling myself I made the right choice. I will graduate. I will love my job. I will make the difference in life that I know I need to make. But there are so many days when I fear this. I wonder. Is it enough? Will I enjoy my job when I hate the process of obtaining that job so much? And the truth is, I don't know. I really don't. I think I know that I will love helping people. That I will find true meaning to my life by providing health services for those who have no other way of doing it. That starting a health clinic out of my church will give me the depth of life that I need to survive. But I don't know. And not knowing is killing me.

I wonder sometimes if this is, in a tiny way, what Jesus felt. If all people who teeter on the edge of service, true service, and calling feel this doubt. I wonder if they toed the edge praying for respite or if they bravely stepped out into the abyss. I stand by the edge, ready to take that jump. But I fear the unknown. And am frustrated by that fear. I have never feared like this before, but then, the stakes were never so high as they are now. Not just my own life, but so many will rest in my hands. What a burden, what a blessing.