Check Yoself

I'm realizing that when you don't stop to check yourself once in awhile, you can get lost meandering through life.

I'm trying to figure out what I want to do with myself next year. Top of my list is to go on a mission trip for an extended period of time and work under a ministry. Okay, that's not entirely true. I wanna go to Europe for a few weeks. But the desire to go on a mission trip is like the desire to read my Bible or work out or eat a balanced meal. I want to do it because I know that it will make me a better person than I am.

However, I am unlikely to travel to Europe, Africa, or Asia, at least not for long, because...umm...
As I was writing that, I realized that I don't have a real reason for why I don't think I'll be able to do those things. I guess I tend to assume that God won't let me go out and do what I want because He has kept me to this path for so long, and I used to resent it. Now I love it, though I don't know if its effect on me has exactly been the best. I just feel like my only hope of doing things right in life is to jump into something with the accountability towards selflessness required by work as a missionary. As it is, I fall into old habits too easily. When I'm on the mission field, all else is abandoned and I'm just whatever God has made me to be up to that date.

Europe is just beautiful and allows me to revel in my love for history and art, the former being the subject I would have majored in had God allowed it. Days of journaling and writing poetry in coffeeshops while people-watching are among the reasons why I have such a deep desire to be back there.

I don't know what God has for me in the future, but I do know that I need to listen to Him and ask Him about it, which is something I haven't been doing to the extent that I should.