Journey to Kuwait: My Season

I begin to see this trend amongst my fellow generation X-ers. In some way, shape or form we were designing lives that we could  settle into. I read somewhere that your 20’s and 30’s is the time where people set their lives up. If this is true, I gather that your 40’s and beyond is a time where you got it together and can coast through life.

Well… I hope so.

At any rate, setting one’s life up looked different for various peers.  I saw people finishing school. I witnessed marriages. I saw people settling into careers. And I watched people starting families. 

My younger self JUST KNEW I would be married by 25 and way before 30. But you know the saying, God laughs at our plans. I have also learned that God sometimes gives you the opposite life of which you have grown accustomed, to balance you out. He’s in charge and He knows what’s best for you.

I am still hopeful for love and marriage, but what seems to be panning out in this juncture of my life are things which benefit my personal development. I am grateful because the more God allows me these opportunities for self-growth; the more I realize the importance of developing into the things I wanted. And just as He allowed other opportunities to happen when I was fully developed, so will He allow marriage.

So if not marriage, then what? What does this personal development look like?

Inadvertently, I have been so inspired by some of my peers through social media. They are finding that the façade of security that a 9 to 5 brings is just not worth the rat race. For me this entailed being overworked, underpaid, under-appreciated day after day, rinse and repeat. The gratification of helping people did not pay my bills and my enthusiasm for this lifestyle was running on fumes. Throw in working for organizations that operated with a closed system that valued sameness as well as  shunned diversity and I needed a way out of said rat race.

I remember being fascinated by my friends who were traveling to foreign lands.  First it was my coworker who traveled to Jerusalem.  Then my friend who travels during every break she gets from work. The last experience, I encountered was of a blogger who freelances from countries all over the world. This, resonated with me. It was her story that opened my mind to what I could potentially experience during my season of singleness. Before I knew it, my faith led me to talk to God about an ideal yearly salary that was far beyond any sum I ever made, my ideal work environment and my desire for international travel.

Little did I know, God began to shift the atmosphere to meet these desires.