The Year I had No Clue What was Going On

2019 was an incredible, turbulent, and crazy year all wrapped up in one. I had so many amazing experiences, met so many wonderful people, grew closer to my Savior, learned more about myself (do you know how many cool talents I’ve picked up in just the past three months!?), and basically rocked life.

But the craziest thing about 2019 is for nine months of it, I had no idea what I was doing or what my future would hold.

At the beginning of this year, I was finishing up college. I knew I would graduate in August and started to think about where I would go, what I would do, and kind of how I would survive in the real world. I began to ponder and pray about it (because my major was in psychology and since I had decided I had zero interest in grad school, that basically meant I had no clear job path ahead of me) – my first step was finding a job and deciding where in the world I wanted that to be.

Obviously, if the decision were entirely mine, I wanted that to be in Texas. Or even anywhere that wasn’t cold (I told the Lord I would be flexible, but He assured me quickly that He’d find somewhere warm for me – He could never make me that miserable). I thought about Florida for about a day and Arizona for two months or so, before finally, my happy heart settled on Texas.

But other than thinking about the broad “where should I go” … I couldn’t get any more direction. I’d pray, fast, go to the temple, and do everything I could, and the answer I kept getting was “don’t worry about it. Live in the moment and worry about your life right now. I’ve got this and I’ll work out the details.”

I was at a phenomenal place in life – my classes were all fascinating (no more generals for me!), my job was somewhere I could be myself and where I truly loved all my coworkers, and my roommates and I were all good friends (something that I found is rare in college). I also took a step back and realized that instead of planning my future and waiting for my dreams to come true, I should be enjoying the dream I was living. BYU was the only school I’d ever wanted to go to my whole life – even if it was cold, even if homework sucked, and even if I was ready to graduate and move onto the next step in life … I was living a life I’d once dreamed about. I sat back and let myself enjoy it and looking back now, I can say those last eight months of school were some of my favorite times I spent at BYU because the Lord reminded me to slow down and enjoy the moment.

I was blessed with peace through this time, even though I couldn’t see the next step. When people asked me what my post-grad plans were, it was easy to reply “I’m going to move to Texas,” but the fact of the matter was, I had no idea what was going on.

This kind of worried my mom (she wanted to know why I didn’t see the need to apply for jobs and look at apartments or really do anything beyond say “I’m moving to Texas” and to be fair, she had a point), but I was pretty calm about it. Every time I considered getting on LinkedIn to look at jobs in major cities in Texas (I had my heart set on Dallas for a while, but ended up looking in Houston for a minute too) or looking at price ranges on apartments, I’d just get stressed out and panic. When I took those concerns to the Lord, I’d get the answer again, “Don’t worry about it. Focus on your life here. I’ve got this.”

I was reminded of all the opportunities I’d had thrown in my lap over the years since I’d come home from my mission – I really never had to work hard to find any of the jobs or apartments I’d found in those years. They just fell into my lap the moment I needed them like a grand miracle. I’d remind myself of those times and tell myself “God is a God of miracles, not a God of statistics” and then be content, again, with leaving the future in His hands.

July came around – a month before graduation. I applied to about four jobs on LinkedIn and also emailed two apartment complexes (one in Dallas and one in Houston for good measure). But guess what? When I prayed for help figuring out what to do, I got the exact same answer I’d been getting for six months, “Don’t worry about it. I’ve got this.”

I continued by some miracle to not worry about it until finals week of my last semester ever. I needed to move out of my apartment that Friday (which was also the day I would take my last final and officially be graduated) and still had no job, no apartment, and honestly no plan to get those things other than “don’t worry about it, the Lord’s gonna take care of it.”

Lucky for me, a miracle happened and my parents abruptly felt the need to leave Minnesota and move to Utah. They found a house super fast and moved to Orem the week before I graduated…so at least I’d have somewhere to live until the job and apartment situation cleared up for me.

Then, the second to last day of finals, a recruiter emailed me out of the blue on LinkedIn with a job offer. I told him I’d have more time to talk next week (I had a final in an hour and I still needed to cram, pack, and clean the apartment because also I was moving the next day) but he said it would only be a few minutes. So he called me. And then I had like four interviews in the next two days (while I was moving – it’s a miracle that worked out) and this amazing job just fell into my lap with literally no effort on my part the exact moment I needed it.

Now that I had a job, a place to live was my next priority. I had a list of apartments I wanted to look at, so I set up a few tours one day and went for it. As I was driving between appointments, I noticed some nice looking apartments on the side of the road that I hadn’t seen online.  I pulled over and the moment I walked into the apartment they showed me on their tour – before I knew the rent, the deposit, the utilities, or anything else – I knew I was going to live there because it had fallen into my lap with so little effort on my part.

I learned that I’m far more independent than I ever thought and I absolutely love having my own place. I finally have the Texas themed bathroom I’ve wanted for years, I have complete control over the thermostat (you’d better believe it’s cranked up all the time because I’m paying the bill all by myself and I will do what I want), it’s always clean because after I clean stuff it stays that way, and I even had the space to add a second bookshelf to my library (because who needs a living room when you can have a library).

I learned that furniture and art are both very expensive things (all I wanted was a picture of Jesus, I just didn’t have a few hundred bucks to spend on it), so I started to make my own. I build all my own furniture now and have learned to draw, paint, and create digital art as well so I can afford to decorate this wonderful place I call home.

As I settled in, I started to have problems eating again. Over the past few years, my immune system has thrown me for a loop and rejected most foods from my diet. I had a long, emotional journey in 2018 just trying to find foods that I could eat and enjoy eating and now…here I was, back at square one, having the foods I finally worked to like taken from me. I honestly wondered, once again, if starving to death would be the way I go because my body rejected everything I tried to eat. The Lord quickly assured me that He had taken me this far … why would He throw this job, apartment, and all these other amazing opportunities at me, only to let me starve to death? I was told, once again, “don’t worry, I’ve got this,” and He helped me work through it and figure out how to eat and continue to enjoy the foods I was eating.

By some miracle, He also helped my budget afford all the car repairs, medical expenses, and also the rent that month that I needed to take care of myself (again – God is a God of miracles, not a God of logic or statistics). I haven’t thought too hard about how this worked out or done the math … I’d learned by this point that the Lord’s got this and I don’t need to worry about it.

Then, in December, I began the final month of having no clue what was going on in my life. I got laid off from my job and, while they are working to re-hire some of us (it’s complicated, let’s just leave it there) and I would absolutely love to go back, I have no actual idea if I’m going to go back there or get a job somewhere else (or who knows – maybe I can start my own business building and painting and doing all sorts of odds and ends; I can be flexible). But spending most of this year in uncertainty, only to be thrown miracles at the very last second over and over again, I’m not worried. The path the Lord needs me to take will become clear to me the very moment I need it to and until then, I just need to keep walking forward.

2020 is going to be the best year ever, not because I have everything figured out or because I am so much more independent or have all these new skills and talents. It’s going to be the best year ever because I know I don’t have to worry. I can sit back and enjoy the moment, knowing that the Lord will take care of the details. He’s got this.