Mrs. Suzuki here: I am often asked, “So….what have you been up to since you got married?” That is a long answer, and not one I want to fully answer at the moment. What I would really like to highlight is what is happening right now, and where I plan on going.
Trying to figure out what I wanted to do in life was a much harder task for me than some. As a person of the arts in a time of economic hardship I have been forced to revaluate where I’m going. My plan originally was to become a special education teacher. But then I realized, I have a passion for kids, but I have no passion for teaching or education. It does not light my fire. I contemplated about a hundred other options. Then I thought nursing, it was a health care profession, which I had often felt drawn to, and I could work with kids. A trip to visit my cousin at the hospital cured me of that desire, because I nearly passed out. Hospitals have a strange way of making me feel queasy. It’s not the blood or anything, its just the hospital itself. Clearly nursing is also not my calling. Then I landed on Occupational Therapy. I had strongly considered it my senior year of high school after doing my senior project in part on it, and then I lost my way in the arts at college. Here I am, all these years later, and I wonder why I ever strayed. This is what I was made for, never have I been so sure of anything.
All I want to do in life is encourage people! I want to see people for who they are, love them in the good and bad, support them, help them, and make them feel valued. That is THE ONLY THING I wish to do. But simply encouraging people does not make money, sadly. I look at OT and think wow, it was designed for me and people like me. I will get to work one on one with people to better their lives. I anticipate sad times, happy times, lonely times, painful times, and triumphant times in my future career as an OT. And I love that, I welcome that, I can’t wait. My own trials and struggles in life have begun the training for such a career. I understand what it feels like to never fit in, to be bullied at school continuously, and struggle to accomplish homework. That was my childhood. I also know what it is like to care for someone in the last stages of their life, that was my Grandma. I don’t know everything, and many people have experienced worse, but what I do know is that my experiences at the very least have allowed me to empathize and relate.
I have been taking the last remainder of my pre-reqs at Loma Linda University, and I love it there! In four years at APU I didn’t make one single new friend, and in just ten weeks at Loma Linda I made a really great friend. Loma Linda has an OT program, and that is the program I am praying to get into for Summer of 2013. I trust God though, and will go where he leads. But I do really hope it is Loma Linda, they are even vegetarian there. What a great fit. The people are awesome, I have had one of the best professors of my college career, and I feel like I finally belong somewhere. I feel God’s peace over it all.
My plan for the next couple years ahead of me is simple. I need to finish my pre-reqs and start applying to programs next fall. I also am currently applying and looking for a full-time job. This phase of life is so vulnerable, and filled with the potential for lots of failure. But, I have never tried to live this life walking alone, I take God along the whole time. I trust his leading and am focusing instead on the huge potential for success. I feel like I have opened a door to a vast new world, while the door on my past is closing and becoming ever distant. My past has shaped me, but I refuse to be a prisoner of it. Instead, I choose hope.
If God has faithfully shown me one thing over and over again in my life, it has been that he answers prayer. But, my experience has often been that he takes his grand old time answering mine. My testimony in the making is filled with examples where I have prayed for many years at a time for the same thing. Always, without fail, he does answer my prayers at just the right time. This has taught me to trust him above myself. Praying for what I have wanted to do in life is finally being answered after a lifetime of prayer really. But, as I am generally moving forward in life down the winding path, and letting my heart heal, God again blows my mind with his perfect timing. When we embark on new adventures and want to share that, real friendships are vital. I have probably been praying heavily and consistently for authentic friendships for three to four years now. I mean to say that I pray daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, etc., the same prayer. Just now, all these years later, in the midst of many storms in my life, he is very slowly beginning to answer those prayers. And he is also answering my prayers of wanting to nurture the friendships I did have as well. To grow stronger and closer to the few that have remained in my life. I am really excited about this because I get to share my hope for the future with people that I love, and that love me back. God is good, all the time, no matter what, in any stage of life, good or bad, God is good all the time. I do not know the lay out of my future, but I know the direction I am supposed to go and I am beginning to see those that will be walking that path with me and vice versa.
Along with all this, next week is probably when I will be launching a whole new blog. I will keep this one up and running because it is fun to have a diary of our life together. The new blog, which I have had in the works for quite a while now, will be totally different. It will be a writing project focused on the bible, healing, and encouragement. All those details will be unveiled soon. I am really excited to begin and share this new project. I feel God moving, and I feel the potential for great ministry. For the first time in a long time, I feel really excited for my future. The only thing I had been really excited about since starting college was getting married. Other than that I was unsure. Now I feel the dust lifting, I am hopeful and excited, and ready. I have hope.
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