When to go...the pressure to keep moving.

Yesterday, I was sitting in the camp dining hall with all of my co-workers for our weekly staff devo. My boss was speaking. In one of his points, he was talking about all the things he has done in the past to prepare him for where he is today, and that in what he is doing now, is preparing him for what is next. In these sentences, my heart stopped a little, I grabbed a napkin and wrote this down:

As a society, there is so much pressure to keep changing things up. We feel this need to get somewhere, get as much out of that as we can (for 1-3 years) then go on a new adventure and get as much of that as we can and repeat. Over and over again. We respect people who have been at the same job for 50 plus years, but if you aren't there, there is a pressure to keep on moving, to keep looking for new and better things.


There is also pressure to keep on growing, to keep learning and keep bettering yourself. Which I don't think is a bad thing, but that spirit makes us feel so discontent in where we are at right now. We should always be improving, but the feeling of needing to improve makes us feel like crap about the place that we are right now.

I love my life that I live right now, most days. I have other dreams though, I often feel like I am wasting my life because I do the same thing day in, day out. Though I do think that there are some real things that I need to do differently in my life, I wonder how much of that is from this pressure to keep moving, keep changing from society and not something that I just know I need to personally do.

Camp is a place of constant change. Especially with staff. I work with a lot of college age people who come and work at camp for a small season while they pursue bigger and better dreams. I am happy for them. Though we have very different jobs, I struggle with them going off to better things, and I stay here, the place that was just their stepping stone.

I know that isn't real. I know that there is so much value and importance in what I do, and that I am not actually less because I am not pursuing their dreams instead of my own. But, even knowing these truths, I sometimes let the lies get the best of my emotions. I question everything what I am and what I am doing.

Where I am at is amazing, I have dreams that are amazing and scary, and maybe someday I will pursue them. But I don't want to pursue them just because I feel the world telling me I need to do something different with my life every 3 years, but instead because I want to pursue them at the time and will of the Lord.