How To Be Okay

shoutout my iPhone and Montana for being pretty

Today, I actually moved.

I've been thinking and talking about it for over a month. I've also, though, been wrapping up final projects for Kingsland, swapping back-to-back weekends in Dallas and Austin, and, last week, helping lead a trip to Montana with 50ish 16-year-olds.

That busy-ness means that the four or so hours I spent driving north today were the first quiet moment I've had to really, truly process what I was doing. To wrap my mind around it. To try and let it sink in and feel real.

Of course, as something solidifies, it takes on weight — if only mental. It's natural (and even healthy, you could argue!) to feel some tension when you take a big step of any kind. Moving forward requires leaving behind. Think about it. That's a gamble.

How do we know if we're doing the right thing?

I've had an inordinate amount of conversations lately that are some riff on this topic — with a friend who made her own move to Austin just weeks before me, with others staying behind in Katy, with coworkers and my boyfriend and a lot of the aforementioned 16-year-olds just trying to figure out how to proceed with growing up. With myself, in my car, this afternoon.

And here's the deal, at the end of the day: if you're within the will of God, you're either in the right place, or you're in the place you need to be to get to the right place.

It's either good, or used for your good.

Those are your options, biblically speaking.

If I'm doing the small things I know to do now — you know, reading the Bible, praying, serving in a local church, working diligently, being kind to people, etc. etc. — then I can be confident moving forward with the big unknowns.

I spent a lot of my life wanting to know God's will for it, and through guidance from people much wiser than me and plain old experience, I've learned that — surprise! — I already know, like, 90 percent of God's will for me. (See: the list in the above paragraph.) It's being obedient in the day-to-day things, and walking forward within those parameters and the freedom they allow. (And don't worry, if all that open space makes you nervous, I promise he'll close the proverbial doors you're not supposed to walk through. I can personally attest to his faithfulness in this, as the ideal analogy for my life following the Lord has often felt less like any sort of linear story and more like a game of pinball.)

Plenty of people have asked me leading up to this move if I'm nervous, or how I know this is the right thing to do. And my honest answer is that I'm just not, and I just do.

God is way too big and we're way too small to mess up his plans for our life. I really, truly believe that. I'm just doing my best to be faithful in what I already know He's called me to do and proceeding from there.

So I'm going to be okay.

And if you're doing the same, then no matter what step you're taking, you're going to be okay, too.