You know when you make a decision that seems so right at the time, but then the rug gets pulled out from underneath you when you least expect it and you’re not so sure anymore?
That’s my life, in a nutshell.
Two months before my senior year of college started, less than a year before I would graduate with a degree in Communication, I decided I didn’t want to be a journalist anymore.
I took a summer class called “Patterns of Domestic Violence” and it was the most emotional, life-changing class I have ever taken. I learned about women who had been horrifically abused for years before they got the courage to leave their abuser and I learned about women who weren’t so lucky and were murdered by their abuser before they could find the strength to get away.
Every assignment brought tears to my eyes and put knots in my stomach, but I started to feel this pull in my heart and I knew that this is what I was meant to do.
Writing has always been a safe-haven for me. I can say things better with a pen then I can with my mouth, which is why I chose journalism in the first place. When I try to put my thoughts into spoken words I stutter half the time trying to get them out. But when I pick up a pen, the words just seem to flow so effortlessly.
Between my passion for writing and my newfound passion for helping abused women, I was terrified and I didn’t know what to do from here.
Do I change my major and start all over? Do I suck it up and be a journalist anyway?
Neither of those options seemed good enough and I discovered after a few weeks of non-stop anxiety and prayer that I don’t have to be a journalist to be a writer. So I went with my gut: finish my bachelor’s degree in Communication and get my master’s in Marriage and Family Therapy.
Journalism was something I had chosen and, for the most part, I loved it. But there were times when I would think to myself, “Is this really for me?”
Counseling abused women isn’t something I chose. I stumbled upon this new career path after taking the only sociology elective that was available this summer, and I have since realized that this was God’s plan for me all along. I could have been decently happy in the career I chose for myself, but I don’t think I would have ever been satisfied. God’s plan, however, is perfect.
I have a long (and expensive) road ahead of me, but I have found comfort in knowing that this is what I’m supposed to do. When it’s all said and done I get to help women discover that they are so much more than what they’ve been conditioned to think and that they deserve a happy and healthy life with someone who will love them for who they are, not destroy them for the things they aren’t.
My plan was never good enough. Discovering this was difficult and stressful, but I’m so thankful I figured it out this early in my life and I can rest easy knowing I’m on the path God had intended for me all along.
