As I pour milk, call out customer names, and giggle with co-workers behind the counter of my beloved Starbucks, Francesca Battistelli belts out a familiar tune in the speakers above me.
When I first began at this little store three years ago, the music was deafeningly loud. I enjoyed it that way because I learned countless new tunes — even if they weren’t new to me. (They played a 70s station for a while, and oh how I miss it.)
Three years later, the speakers are broken, and I have to strain my ears to hear even an inkling of sound. Yet this week I heard Francesca Battistelli sing out a few verses I desperately needed to hear, the chorus of an old song that resonates with this recent college graduate:
I’m letting go
Of the life I planned for me
And my dreams
I’m losing control
Of my destiny
It feels like I’m falling and that’s what it’s like to believe
So I’m letting go
Perhaps I don’t resonate so much with the feeling of falling, but of learning to let go of my own plans and dreams? Losing control of my destiny? Certainly.
When I heard this song blaring at work, I thought, Hmm, that’s funny. How applicable. I should listen to that on the way home.
I forgot to listen to it on the way home. However, later that afternoon my legs were begging for a walk, so I took them on one. That’s when I remembered to listen to Battistelli’s little tune from 2008.
Mid-walk, I looked up how old Francesca is — 38 — which means her song came out when she was 23. Guess what? I’m also 23. That number prompted a memory of a Buzzfeed article I read some years ago. It ranked the years of your 20s from worst to best. Guess what? Twenty-three was ranked the very worst.
It’s just a list, of course, but one of the author’s reasons for putting 23 at the bottom was the post-graduate aspect. The first year of real adulting.
Hmm, yes. Right now I find myself in that odd in-betweenness. Still living at home; still working at Starbucks; still working as an intern; no friends (yet); applying to big girl jobs; losing motivation to apply to big girl jobs; single as can be.
These are not all bad things. In fact, I’m quite content with most of them. Still, I’ve had my moments. Moments of wanting to be the girl who has it all together right after college, who has her flourishing community and exciting career, who has something to tell people other than I’m working at Starbucks while trying to find a full-time job in journalism or communications.
Through these moments, the Lord has been gracious to me. Through getting off thyroid medication, through the pressures I’ve put on myself to find a job, through the endless push and pull between wanting to be and wanting to do, He has been gracious.
He is teaching me to surrender to Him and to trust Him — two things I am challenged to do on a daily basis. But it’s been freeing, peaceful, simple. Part of the fun is in the unknown, right?
So, until my big girl job arrives, I’ll be steaming milk, shaking espresso, and running to the freezer to pull pastries, trusting the Lord’s timing in all things.
The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps.
Proverbs 16:9 (ESV)
Indeed, God is my salvation;
I will trust him and not be afraid,
for the LORD, the LORD himself,
is my strength and my song.
He has become my salvation.
Isaiah 12:2 (CSB)
Pursuing Peace 