It’s finals week on the campus where I work which can only mean one thing: summer break is 48 hours away.  To me it means quiet, rest, and a slower pace, but it also brings with it space for reflection and planning.  I’m entering into a reflective mode this week as students wrestle with, “What’s next?” and I find myself asking the same question.  One student said yesterday she has been asking people who she sees as “settled” in their careers if this is where they thought they would be when they were in college.  She was surprised to find out that for most, life’s journeys took them in directions they could not have even begun to imagine.  They love where they are at, but would have never predicted it.

As I thought about it, I began to think of people I know who are “settled” in their careers.  This year more than any other I have felt like a “grown-up” as I settle into my career, gained a mortgage, have been married for 4 years and the honeymoon is over (I mean this in the sense of now we know what for better or for worse means and in sickness and in health – even though I still get butterflies when I pick my husband up from work), no one knows what Jem and the Rockers were, and recently I was told that U2 is classic rock.  (I’m sorry what?)  This was a year when huge decisions were made for our family and I am choosing who I want to be.  Of course this comes with job choices, communities joined, and passions to pursue, but life always throws some curve balls in there and I’m learning every week what “pick your battles” means more and more.

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