You know that feeling? That one right before you are about to make your final decision on something, you sit there weighing all the consequences of your options and you feel absolutely torn in half?
On one side, you have your emotions and desires. Your secret pride that reminds you of all you have done to deserve one of the possible options. Your hard work, your time, your tears and frustration, all put together working so hard to get to your goal. The daily struggle with whether or not you'll be good enough to go all the way to achieve your end goal. The desired goal that you THINK you need.
On the other hand you have your autonomic responses. Your gut telling you that the other option is the right one. It doesn't make any sense because that option is easy. You didn't work hard for it because it is what has come naturally to you, however for you it's just not good enough. It's not prestigious enough. It doesn't make you think. It doesn't provide you with the ability to alter someone's life by making advances and break-throughs in your field. And yet, that is where your gut is leading you. You know you'll have peace of mind with the second option.
You were pretty much born with the natural ability to succeed at either of your options and so much of your self-esteem is contingent upon what you ultimately choose to do right here at this very moment. You have gotten half way into achieving your dreams, half way to taking out your pride from the depths of your heart and putting it on display for all to see how good you are. How smart you are. How much YOU have become and succeeded in. But you feel worry and confusion about it. You can't clearly map out the rest of your plan. You are just floundering in this sea of self-importance and desire for others to realize how great you are because you have felt down on yourself for so long. If you just finish you will have gained the approval and respect of everyone in your circles of family and friends. If you don't, you think other people will attribute it to your laziness. There are so many personal feelings riding on this decision right here.
But what if the other option, the one you have to work at less, is really the one that you are supposed to go with? Deep down in your heart you know that this one would make you the most happy, but you don't want to lose everything you've worked so hard for. You don't want to lose the approval of even your closest family members and friends. You don't want to have to explain your seemingly stupid decision to just leave your hard work on the side of the highway and keep on going. But at the same time there is just something so wonderfully intriguing about this option. You know that it is the right option but your fear, unwavering fear, of failure and ridicule keep you from going on full steam ahead with it. What if you give up your hard work and go with this path and it fails? What would you be left with? Dried out dreams, lost hope and above all, the assumed inevitable "I told you so's" from your friends and family. After everything you've done, do you really want to deal with that?
The real question in all of this is at what point do you decide to stop your worrying, pull yourself up by the bootstraps and give it all over to God? What does HE want you to do? How does HE want you to live your life to impact others? If it is through success from hard work and time put in, then by ALL means go with that option. However, as Christians, we need to have faith that we can be used by God even in the smallest ways. That to be used by God, we don't have to go to a prestigious school or earn a doctorates degree to impress him or make him happy. After all, isn't He the one that fed 5,000 out of five loaves of bread and two fish? The one that made a blind man see. The one that paints the most beautiful sunsets. Just as he paints the sunsets, he paints our lives. They really are beautiful, and everyone has a different part to play in the completed painting. If a line was unsatisfied with being a line and wanted to be a square, it would change the whole meaning of picture and it wouldn't work. The line sees the square as being more noticed and appreciated because it's different and seemingly more significant in the overall image. But what that line fails to realize is that there couldn't be a square without a line so the role it plays is just important if not more so than that of the flashy square.
Its not easy to be happy with who God made you to be if you keep comparing yourself to others and looking to them in order to define your self-worth, your happiness, and your role in God's painting. THEY ARE NOT THE PAINTERS OF THIS PICTURE! While it can be important to converse with the squares in your painting, you can ruin the beauty of the whole thing if you fail to get God's counsel. You need to recognize and accept the fact that you have been called to be a line in the painting and embrace it. People will still love you but it will be because you are joyful, dependable, and ultimately in God's will. When we are in the center of God's desire for our lives, He makes sure to add blessings even if we can't seem them now. You don't have to do something strenuous and scholarly to be doing something for God, but sometimes it's just embracing the fact that you are a called to be a line that can be considered "doing hard things".