Running Away, The other side of the fence, Prayer

I am afraid I got a little upset with one of my daughters last night but it has been building for a couple weeks. She is determined to move, find a new job and start a new career path. The job she wants to move to start is not the type of job that gives me confidence she will be adequately secure and she only hopes for acceptance into a program to start the career move.
I told her I strongly disapproved because it appears that the motivation is not either the new job or the new career path but more for the sake of moving. She wants to come back to the Northeast and that I do understand, especially since her life was strongly impacted here. It is the desperation of the relocation that I question.
So I asked, “Is there something you are running away from or something you are running to?” My favorite line in the movie Monster’s Inc. is, “Your stunned silence is very reassuring.” Her stunned silence was not very reassuring.
So I asked, “Is it going to break you heart to leave your friends and family and will it be very hard to say goodbye to everyone there?”
“Some”, she admitted.
“So you are running away from something?”
“I don’t think so.”
This daughter has a good paying job, recently got a very good promotion and is doing well in school. She has not even contacted the school she plans to attend to see if there are opening for which she could qualify but has promised a perspective employer that she will be available by early next month and has given her current employer two weeks notice.
So I offered this; “Contact the school and see if there are openings. Ask how to apply and see what the qualifications for acceptance are. If you meet the criterion, apply and see if you are accepted. If you are accepted, then make plans to attend, otherwise stay where you are until the Lord really opens a door for you to make the changes you are seeking.”
I could be wrong, but I have too often been guilty of chasing “greener grass” on the “other side of the fence” and it has rarely worked out well for me or my family. I have also been guilty of moving too soon, not allowing God to prepare the way before me – which He will do if a person will wait on Him – and suffered the consequences of making an ill-prepared, over-anxious and if I were totally honest, running to avoid something, move.
Eventually things have a way of working out but how much better would it be if two months of waiting patiently provided a very clear pathway forward. God is not in the business of making us guess and more than I am in the business of making my own children guess what I want of them. As an honest conversation with me will answer many, if not all, questions, my own children have for me so will a conversation with our Heavenly Father answer most of our questions seeking direction for our lives, especially those choices between better and best. (Choices between right and wrong are not the difficult ones.)
That’s what prayer is, having a conversation with God. (Just make sure you don’t do all the talking.)