A Chinese Birthday Cake

I don’t know about you, but when I turned twenty I felt the hand of God descend upon me and my entire life’s direction was revealed unto me.

If only.

Actually, the most important thing that happened on the day I turned twenty was that my mom could no longer complain to other people that she had four teenagers. It had been getting really old to be lumped in with a fifteen, fourteen, and thirteen year old.

The second most important thing that happened was that my family spontaneously decided to sing Happy Birthday to me in the Chinese restaurant we were eating at and our waitress was all like “Oh, we have birthday cake in the back” and she gave me a huge free piece of cake.

So here I sit, on the verge of the ten most exciting years of my life (that’s accurate, right?), and I’m just as confused about my life as I was ten years before. Actually, I probably was more certain of my life direction at age ten than I am now.

Literally every day I wake up with a new certainty of the purpose of my life that is different than what I woke up with the day before. A few weeks ago I was all set to head to New York Film Academy to pursue a career in film acting. Then I was content to not go back to school at all and hope my church hires me. Now I’m contemplating the possibility of writing as a career.

Then there’s the whole wrestling with my personal life/thoughts to get all that straightened out with God. Plus being responsible to keep a pool running safely, doing whatever my worship pastor needs doing for my internship, and attempting to write 40,000 words of a novel during the month of July. Oh and I teach cello and viola lessons. I don’t even play the viola very well.

Don’t get me wrong; I love everything about that list. I’m not complaining. I’m just saying, where I am in my life right now doesn’t really allow me a whole lot of time to contemplate my future. I’m trusting God with it. He’s probably laughing anyhow and saying, “Chad, I’ve got you marked down as –insert career here—so don’t sweat it!”

If He could only say that a bit louder so maybe I would overhear. Oh well.

I’m on vacation right now with my family, and my future doesn’t seem too important when I have these people around me, laughing during card games and taking photo-shoots on the beach.

Now, if only I could get my brand new DSLR camera’s video function to work properly so I can pursue my career in the film industry.