Passing the Test

 My phone chimed while traffic was at a standstill. 

I glanced at the notification. It was an email with the results of the licensure exam I had taken two weeks earlier. I read the words slowly to make sure I was seeing them correctly and decided I needed to pull over to read the results. 

I exited the freeway and stopped in the parking lot of a Cane's restaurant. I took a deep breath and navigated through the logins and swipes to check my score. 

My breath caught in my throat as I read the words . . . "Congratulations!. . . " I passed. They are going to let me be a therapist. A real one, with an office. 

There have been so many times throughout this journey when I've realized I was holding my breath...waiting for the other shoe to drop, the moment when the people in charge of my program would realize that I'm not smart enough or capable enough to actually do this work. Every step of the journey that I have made it through has felt like a miracle to me. 

The words jumped off the page, and Gratitude enveloped me like a tidal wave. 

As I continued the drive to school, I thought about how all the previous versions of myself would feel about this news. 

I imagined the little girl smiling with delight, but other versions' of me not believing it. 

It feels like I was one of Sid's toys from Toy Story, and God has taken me and has been constantly restoring me to my original value and purpose. 

Abraham is one of my favorite people in the Bible. Actually, what I really love is seeing how God fathers Abraham and takes him from a person who couldn't trust God with simple things to someone who trusts God with everything. The transformation is beautiful, but the beauty is in God's work. 

I connect with that. I feel like that story is my own. My life has been a story of God fathering me, correcting me, loving me, and gently disciplining me. I'm not saying that I am at the level that Abraham reached in his later life...I still have a long way to go. But I'm feeling grateful for the journey, and I pray that I continually submit to God's leadership so that someday it will be my story too.