You know, God has the oddest sense of humor.
Six years ago, I was midway through my junior year of high school. I read like a fiend, wrote for the school paper, and knew I’d be an editor when I grew up.
God snickered and decided to let me fall in love with science.
Six months ago, I graduated from Calvin, a newly minted biologist, brimming with anticipation. The world was my organically grown and sustainably harvested oyster, and I dreamed of finding a job where I could wander around in the woods and make my world a greener, more scenic place. A minor stumbling block: it’s hard to launch a scientific career without a master’s degree. I knew this, but I wanted to take a year or two to scope out the land, refill my dwindling coffers, and fortify myself for a fresh degree assault. So I plunged ahead and job-hunted like a mad woman.
God guffawed and gave me a part-time, unpaid internship at a township park near my family’s home in Ada, MI. Don’t get me wrong—the internship was lovely. I adored working outdoors, I reveled in unscheduled days, and I got to spend quality time with good books and better people. I continued to network. I fruitlessly applied to dozens of science jobs. I got restless.
God rubbed his hands together in anticipation.
As autumn fell, he started nudging me, gently striving to get my attention. Geneva, he whispered, you’ve been running in circles for months. We haven’t talked in a while. Maybe it’s time to stop trying to figure out the next step by yourself. Let me handle this.
I resisted. I was a capable woman, a college graduate, a fine potential employee. This career-building thing should have been easy. But I was getting nowhere. Finally, in late October, I relented. Okay, God, I sighed, I’m tired of drifting. Nothing’s changing. I haven’t dared to trust you, because I worried that you might let me down. But I guess that’s not how you operate. Fine. I trust you. Sorry it took so long for me to say it.
And as I turned my job search over to God, he warmed up for the punchline. Remember when I mentioned that, growing up, I wanted to be an editor? Well, this biologist just got herself a job at a publishing house.
I’d been poking around on Calvin’s online job board when I found a listing for a temporary position at Zondervan, a Christian publisher in Grand Rapids. On a whim, I applied. Five days after giving God the reins, I got a call from Zondervan’s director of audio and video production. Zondervan had a massive backlog of video Bible study sessions and needed to plunk someone in front of a computer for forty hours a week until the videos were fully uploaded to a handful of video-hosting websites.
So now this biologist sits behind a sleek Mac computer, jams to Billy Joel, and puts high-quality Bible study sessions online where the whole world can benefit from them. It’s not glamorous, but it’s surprisingly fulfilling. And, while God elbows me in the ribs to make sure I appreciate his joke, I laugh along.
Geneva Langeland (’13) survived graduate school with minimal blood loss, escaping with her ms in environmental policy and communication. She now works in Ann Arbor, Michigan, as the communications editor at Michigan Sea Grant. There, she gets to hang out with educators, researchers, and communicators who love the Great Lakes as much as she does.
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As Dale Cooper (Calvin College chaplain emeritus) likes to say, “God’s other name is Surprise.”
Glad you’re well, Geneva.