Even If

    I still remember the humiliation I felt when someone called me a show-off because of the way I answered a question in English class when I was in eleventh grade. I remember the book we were discussing, and I remember the answer I gave, which I was very proud of until I was quickly shot down by this comment from a classmate. Most of all, I remember what it felt like step out and share my thoughts with other people, only to be met with hostility and criticism. It is experiences like that one, combined my sensitive nature that I can't seem to shake, that make it hard for me to share certain things sometimes.
     I've had a feeling for a few weeks now that there's something I should write about. I've tried to shake the feeling by telling myself that hearing the same song over and over again is not necessarily a message from God, it's just something that's bound to happen when you listen to the same radio station for all forty days of Lent. But Lent has been over for a week now, and the beginning of the infamous pledge drive has prompted me to change the radio station, but the feeling still remains. There's something I feel like I need to say, and I'm probably not going to be able to write about anything else very well until I say it.
     Right now, I am waiting to hear if I have been accepted to be a part of something that is very exciting to me. It's become so important to me that I haven't wanted to talk about it with many people. First, because I don't really want to talk about the very real possibility that it might not work out. I have no idea how good my chances are, and for all I know they could have thrown my application in the trash as soon as the interview ended. The second reason I don't want to talk about is it is that it's just too sacred to me. I care about it a lot, and the outcome, good or bad, is going to affect me.
      But I feel that I need to acknowledge, to myself as much as everyone else, that even if this doesn't work out for me, I will be okay. It's difficult for me to even say that because I desperately hope that this opportunity does work out in my favor. It is difficult to say, but I do believe it. There have been many times in my life that I have not gotten the outcome I wanted, and it's always painful in the moment. But looking back, I can say that I have always been okay. I have been sad, even heartbroken. I have struggled more times than I can count with not understanding the way situations have worked out in my life. But I have never been completely hopeless, and I can't shake the feeling that I need to acknowledge that feeling during this time of waiting, when I don't know the outcome yet.
     When you get down to the root of it, I think that's what makes me a person who has faith in God. Being involved in mission work is very important to me, and I love my church family dearly. But at the end of the day, those things are not the reason for my hope. Those things are not the reason that I can hand a malnourished baby back to his mother in a third world country and not come home hopeless. Those things are not the reason that I can hear of the death of two precious children I met in Honduras, and still have hope that I will see them again one day. My hope comes from my relationship with God, my faith in Him. If this opportunity works out for me, I will be overjoyed. But even if it does not, I will still have hope.