"Show me again what I was made for, help me to see you're still leading me."

My life has been such that it has consistently inspired one question: why? A question that is simply phrased, but whose answers are more often than not complicated.

One of the most recent and significant situations that inspired the asking of this question was the changing of my major from music industry to English.

I felt like God let me know that this was what I needed to do. I couldn't begin to understand why, though. Sure, I had an interest in English. I've been an avid reader for almost as far back as my memory extends, but if I were to tell you my chief passion, it was music. Even though I didn't have a clear idea of what I would do in the future, I couldn't really imagine myself doing anything that didn't include music, so why change my major? Immersing myself in literature was certainly appealing, but I didn't see it leading to a career, which is supposed to be the purpose of higher education, right?

But I did it. I moved to the fringes of the music department and turned my attention to the English department, while clinging to my faith that "all things work together for good to those who love God, who are called according to his purpose," and "'For I know the plans I have for you,' declares the Lord...'plans to give you hope and a future.'" And for the past two years, I have done my best to learn and excel, trusting that it will all come to something, but not knowing what that something is.

It can be hard to be faithful sometimes. Or like my friend Jason Gray puts it, "sometimes it's hard to tell if I'm faithful or a fool to believe you're still leading me." Almost every day the thought "what if I'm being foolish?" has been forefront. It's hard to do things with conviction and certainty with that looming over you.

But, praise the Lord, God is faithful. And it's not hard for him to be so.

Today, out of the blue, while I wasn't even thinking about my future and what am I doing and why am I doing it, I had a revelation. Using that terminology makes it seem really grand, like the skies divided, or I fell into a holy trance and was granted a mystic vision, but it was really much simpler than that. Which, according to my experience, has been the way God usually works. And what I learned doesn't seem like much, but for me, spending every day pushing through my questions, it was monumental enough to affect my breathing. There I was walking in between Kirksey Old Main and Jones Hall on the MTSU campus, and I audibly gasped, then my face screwed up and I was on the verge of tears just seconds after I had been smiling about the wonderful class I just had.

Some glimmer of purpose in all that I'm doing hit me, and it was startling. I was thinking about my passion for story. I could spend the next hour talking about it and I would only scratch the surface of its importance. As I thought of that, I realized that my passion for this has been greatly cultivated in the last couple of years. It was there before, otherwise I don't know why I would have pored over so many stories in my childhood, but it has taken a more defined shape in the last two years. The years I've spent studying literature.

I consider this to be a huge part of me now, and that might not be the case had I not studied literature.

That's not all. Music is still important to me. Just as much as story. In minoring in music, I found that I could learn all the basics about music and much about how it relates to culture, without having to go through all of the classical training involved in studying it as a major. I have felt no calling to be a professional opera singer, but understanding music and being able to create it has been important.

But the greatest thing to me is the marriage of story and song.

In that moment where I gasped I realized that I have been learning all of the tools to wed story and song. Wow.

Some people learn this without stepping foot in a university, but I think this is what it took for me. I don't think my passion for story would have been fully realized outside of this context. Additionally, my writing has improved by miles in a short period of time.

Finally, a small bit of confirmation. God reached out to me and said, "See. I do know what's going on." My weary heart was touched and I didn't care who might walk by me and see my emotion-contorted face.

Having the perspective I do now, I don't know why I didn't connect the dots before. It seems so obviously simple. But maybe that was because I was ready to understand it today. Just like multiplying seemed simple to me at the age of eight, but it would have thrown me for a loop just two years before as I was trying to learn how to borrow from the tens column to subtract 49 from 81. God's timing is perfect.