One of the hardest things about life after college was time. In college, it felt like I had time for everything. Once I started working, it seemed like I didn’t have time for anything. The biggest challenge was figuring out how to spend time in the Bible.
I was waking up at 5:30 AM to catch a train to work, and if there was a seat, I could spend a little time reading. The train almost always filled up, though, so every day, I had to decide: do I stand up and give my seat to someone else, or do I continue sitting and reading? Either way, I felt guilty—guilty for not being kind to others or guilty for not reading the Bible—and since I wasn’t getting much sleep, waking up even earlier didn’t seem right. My whole life didn’t seem right.
Then one morning, standing on the train and reading, I found Psalm 139:
“O Lord, You have searched me and known me.
You know when I sit down and when I rise up…
You search out my path and my lying down
And are acquainted with all my ways.”
Down to the detail of when I was standing and when I was sitting, God was telling me He knew all about it. (In fact, I got the sense that He even knew the name of the train I was on: the Port Authority Trans-Hudson, i.e., the Path Train.)
What I learned that day is that God knows life after college is different than life in college. He knows we need to make adjustments to fit into the new places He calls us. What God wants from us is not simply time. He wants our hearts, and that surrender is not measured by the clock.
Two things that really helped me during this busy time were learning how to be more aware of God during the day, even while doing my job (from the book Practicing the Presence of God) and learning that life is going to be busy at times (Mark 3:20-21, 6:31).
