As long as I can remember I have considered myself a Christian, but up until my junior year of college, I was obsessed with wanting my life to play out the way I thought it should. At the time, my goal was to find a summer engineering internship. I thought if I worked hard enough, there was no way God would not reward me with an internship. I thought my worth came from how hard I worked and how good of a person I was and believed God would reward me for it. Before I realized it, my internship search had become the most important thing in my life, and whether I got one or not would define me. In my mind, I was a success if I found one, and a loser if I did not. What I experienced while searching for my internship revealed to me how incorrect I was when it came to my understanding of God’s grace, love, and plan for my life.

My search for an internship did not go as I wanted. I went to the fall career fair, where I was able to land a couple internship interviews, but none of the interviews translated to me getting an offer. As I went through spring semester, I had more interviews, but was never given any offers, and my frustration with God grew. When I was rejected by the last company I interviewed with, I broke down. I felt like a failure and not good enough for anyone, and I also was mad that God didn’t give me what I wanted. I felt sick to my stomach and I couldn’t stop crying.

Instead of deciding to reject God completely from my life, I thankfully did the opposite and dug deeper into God’s word. I wanted to understand better what it meant to be a Christian, because I never felt I fully understood what Christianity was all about, even though I had always been a Christian. I began regularly going to Cru with my close friend Doug that spring semester, and was soon connected with Jordan Mancl, a member of Cru staff. Both Doug and Jordan recommended that I should start reading Matthew so I began reading it as soon as the school year ended.

A few days into summer break, I went to tour a company outside of Madison. They said they weren’t planning on hiring any interns, but they were happy to give me a tour. On my drive to the tour, I listened to a sermon on an app on my phone that talked about how we need to trust God when our own hopes and aspirations are destroyed. The sermon convinced me that even though I was unable to find an internship, God had a plan, a good plan that will help develop me into the person He wants me to be, and all I had to do was trust him. I told God that I would make the priority of my summer learning more about him.

A couple days later, as I was in the middle of reading Matthew chapter 14, I got a phone call from the company I toured with, and they offered me an internship for the summer! I was so happy and thankful to God. This job then gave me the opportunity to join two bible studies in Madison during the summer, and one of them focused on God’s attributes. I learned what God’s grace truly meant, and this is when I realized that no matter how good I am, I am far from perfect, and it is by God’s grace that I don’t get what I deserve. I realized that God doesn’t reward us for doing good, but rather all great things in life are blessings by God’s grace. It turned out that the experiences God put me through amid finding an internship turned out to be the best thing for me at the time. I realized that God’s plan for my life is better than my own, and I never have to feel like a failure if my identity is in Christ, because God’s love is unconditional. Since I came to this realization, my life has had its ups and downs, but through it all I know I am always loved and cared for by God and that He has a plan, which brings a sense of peace to my heart that is so comforting, even when everything seems to go wrong. It is a peace that hope everyone can have. I don’t know what I would do without it.