Why now?

1 class down...many, many more to go!  

I finished my very first graduate level seminary class this week.  50% of the class grade was do in the last 2 weeks so I still don't know how I did, but I feel pretty good about it.  I know I learned a ton!  It was challenging in ways I never expected it to be and a little more fun then I anticipated.  

I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up.  I'm still not exactly sure why God has called me to seminary.  And although I'm more confident now then I was 3 months ago that this is where I'm supposed to be, I'm still not sure why it had to be now.  I am only able to juggle one class at a time and juggle is absolutely the best word for it.

I have 3 young children, one of them not even in school yet.  He is around all the time, asking for my attention, wanting to play, needing me.  And I am busy, reading theology working on a paper or typing up notes.  There are times I feel like it is unfair to him, and to my other children.  I have been more stressed this semester than I have been in a long time.

I can remember a couple of years ago when my husband took a new job.  He was stressed. Big time.  I remember telling him that our family unit can only take so much stress and if he was going to carry all of it himself, then I couldn't do anything at all stressful, because it would exceed the amount of stress our family could take.  Needless to say I have carried my share of the stress and then some the past 3 months.  

So why now?  Why didn't God want me to wait a couple of years?  Why  not wait till the kids were all in school full time?  I don't know.  I don't pretend to understand God's timing.  There are certainly plenty of things in my life that he is telling me to wait on.  It seems like most things I think I am ready for God is telling me "no, not yet."  So why was this one a "yes, now"?  I don't know.  

I do know that God's timing is perfect.  I know that he has a plan and I know that he works for the good of those who love him.  And I do love him.  So I have to trust that in his infinite wisdom and his glorious plan it makes sense for me to be doing this, even now.  Juggling things beyond my capacity to juggle.  

Are you in the same boat?  Are there things God is telling you to do now, even though you think you are not ready?  Are there other things he is telling you "no, not yet" when it is all you want to do?  It's not for us to figure out, it's not for us to understand, it is only  for us to listen and obey.  That is what we are called to do.