What am I supposed to do?

There are times when it is hard to know what to do or what choices to make. Several months ago I met with a student who, when she met me, fairly shouted, "Barbara, I know now why I met you. You are in my life to be my mentor." I didn't have a sudden rush of positive feelings, but since she approached me, and since I work in higher education, I felt duty bound to be of help to her.
I also greatly admired her for being so forthright about seeking out what she wanted, at the risk of looking silly.

So I've been meeting with this young woman every week for an hour. It's not for therapy; it's for talking about whatever she wants to talk about. She'd like to go back to her home country and start an educational institution for impoverished women who face a future of near slavery and abuse. It's a marvelous goal and I've done all I can to encourage her in setting everything in motion. So we've talked about how to realize her dream: go talk to the dean, talk to people who can help her set up a workable curriculum, find a grant, work with a benefactor to help fund her students, etc. It's been very exciting.

And I started feeling beyond my depth. I had no answers for her. I know nothing about starting schools. I'm a simple country girl from Upstate New York who lives very humbly in a fast-paced world. As I've listened to my student every week, I've wondered to myself whether or not our time is serving her well.

She's very excitable, eager to create helpful programs for her compatriots, --and she wants to do it all last month! There are days when she comes to see me when I can't interject a comment for a good 25 minutes, so ebullient is she. So I sit back and wait, fighting the tenseness in my shoulders and my shallow breathing as I try not to feel impatient. She is going so fast, almost as though she is trying not to give a moment to her fears. Or that she feels that if she can plan everything out herself, it will naturally, happen. When finally she stops, she looks at me with expectation, but with some disgust--maybe that she's talked so long, or that she knows that her excitement will be difficult to translate into action, or bracing herself for a rebuttal from me.

Every week I hear myself saying the same things:
Knock on every door and then wait.
Don't be afraid to take risks in asking people to help you.
Ask God and see what He opens up for you.
Keep your determination to help your people at home.
Seek out ways to be content while you wait.
Line up options and then wait.
Recognize that wherever you go next (after graduation) may be the perfect training experience for you to run a school.
Wait.
Pray.
Wait.
Stay active.
Keep faithful.
Wait.
Set things up that can help.
Wait.
Wait...

Wouldn't it be nice, if, as an old pastor from my subculture used to say, "...God could just throw a brick at you with a note tied on it?" I would love it. For people who are not used to a God or Higher Power who actually does something when they ask, this can be agonizing--an exercise in futility. What am I supposed to do? Unless one has a history of seeing the providence of God in situations that open up fortuitously and has experienced that stretch of faith, waiting brings up all the doubts and old stuff of the past, like nothing else. So I try to support her during these days, as she tries to create this school. Part of the challenge is keeping her from going off the deep end with her anxiety. And part of it is helping her to wait until the plans and connections she has made have ripened into reality.

Any more, I end up saying the same things every week. "Cecilia, I can tell you one thing without any shadow of doubt whatsoever. It's something I know is more true than the fact that I'm sitting here. And that is, that God is absolutely trustworthy. Keep setting things up and investigating possibilities. But you are working too hard creating options for your life and then asking God to choose one of them for you. Just ask Him to show you what to do, make the best choices you can with what you have to work with, keep praying, and wait to see what will happen. You will know exactly what to do at the right time."

Cecelia squirms in her chair and launches off verbally in another direction. Then she stops short and says, "I know. I just hate this waiting stuff. It's horrible."
"Yes, but you will not rush into doing something that is foolish and ill-advised, and you will have more options, the longer you wait. If you are to go a certain direction or make a certain choice, you will know it and do it before it disappears."
"Do you think?"
"No. I know it."
She sighs, frowns and looks at me with that same expression of disgust from earlier.
"I think you need to be my therapist, Barbara."
"No. I can't do that. It's not ethical to provide therapy to my students."
"But I don't take any classes from you."
I regard her the same way every week: sideways, looking up through my eyebrows. "Cecelia, just wait. You will see what you need to do next." She is a master of changing topics, and like a waterbug, flits across conversations with lightning speed.
"Cecelia, slow down. You will know what to do."

So we sit together every week and ponder what to do next. That's her story.
Mine is that we sit together every week and share the unfixability of her situation. She needs to sit and wait. She doesn't graduate for six more months. She will be fine. She will know what to do, and everything will come together for her because everything has ripened into reality at the right time.

I know it like I know few other things in this world.