Seek Week: Tuesday - God's Voice

I went to film school at California State University Long Beach; it’s a school and program that I now love and am so incredibly thankful for, but I went into it kicking and screaming. You see I was going to go to film school at UCLA, or even USC – Long Beach was my back up school, and no one with great grades and stellar recommendations goes to their backup school.

I applied to the film major at the top film schools in California as a transfer student, after three years at a community college. I was terrified because I felt a huge push from God onto my path of film directing and I had no idea what I was doing; I was still even wary of telling people I wanted to go into film. I thought they would laugh at me and tell me I was kidding myself, which they did but that too became a part of my journey. The pull was strong enough from God that even though I was on wait lists at Chapman & USC I chose to go on to Long Beach, trusting that God put me in the place that He wanted me and I was fully expecting to hate it and spend two years at an inferior film school, taught by professors who were teaching because they couldn’t be doing, and hating that I couldn’t be at my dream school.

I should have known never to question God.

From minute one on campus I was in love. I felt like I was finally where I was supposed to be, I was finally learning what I was supposed to be doing and for the first time in my life I was utterly comfortable in my own skin. God had planted me in a place that caused me to excel. He put me in a program that was better than I had ever anticipated and one that taught me more than I ever thought I could learn. Because God sent me to Long Beach I met people, saw movies and had experiences that I never would have had otherwise and I am a different person, a different artist for it.

I spent two wonderful years at Cal State University Long Beach. During those two years I felt God’s presence in a way that I haven’t felt since; it was so clear and sure that I never had any doubts about what I was doing or where He was taking me. In fact, I felt it so strongly and so uniquely that I have been trying to recapture it ever since I graduated in 2005.

Since leaving Long Beach I’ve felt God speak to me, but in much smaller and more subtle ways than he did for those two years. I still know that I am on the right path, and He is guiding me, but I am learning a new lesson now. Instead of learning how to go where I don’t want to be, I think I am learning about how to wait for His time and not mine. This lesson is a long one and if I am being honest one that I hope will end soon, but my faith is such that I will continue to go, to wait, and to hold everything in as open a hand as possible until I feel God call me in another direction and that has not happened yet.