God, as He always does, showed up for me in big ways this week. He answered two prayers AND he gave me my own miracle in the middle of a storm (literally). I started nannying again this week, and I also got to make a quick trip out to Southern California this weekend, so it was a busy week, but I was still missing something.

I was missing my boyfriend, not in the terrible, heart-being-ripped-out-of-my-chest-way (I’ve been there – that’s not healthy) but in the “wow, he does some very obnoxious things, but I just can’t picture my life without him as long as I have a choice” kind of way. And I needed that because unbeknownst to onlookers, I had a lot of uncertainties and fears about our relationship this semester.

More than once, I asked my steadfast, honest boyfriend if going on a break would be a good idea, and thank God he never agreed and always talked me out of it. All along, I shouldn’t have been asking my boyfriend to do something to open my eyes to what I really want – I should have been asking God.

God ultimately knew what I needed, and he answered my prayer for a break to figure things out in HIS way. My boyfriend applied for the amazing opportunity to serve the Lord as a counselor at Kamp Kanakuk down in Southern Missouri, and with that opportunity comes limited cell service for a total of 8 weeks this summer.

Since we’ve started dating, my boyfriend and I have barely gone a day without saying something or sending one silly Facebook article or video to each other, not to mention having all of our classes together and living within walking distance from each other while we’re at school. Needless to say, my boyfriend’s summer plans posed a challenge for our relationship, but we both readily accepted it knowing God was and is on our side. And so while God was obviously working in my boyfriend down at Kamp in the first week of training, I went into my week open to whatever God had in store for me.

The two oldest girls I nanny were signed up for Vacation Bible School (VBS) through a new church in town called Bible Baptist Church, and I had the choice to start nannying them this past week and take them to VBS or have the week off. I was tempted to take the week off because then I might be able to extend my California trip, but I decided to start anyways. Then I had the choice to hang out and help at the church or go do my own thing and come back to pick the girls up when VBS was over. God gave me choices, but He clearly already had a plan in place.

The first day of VBS, I didn’t choose to stay. I was sad about not being about to talk to my boyfriend, and I really just wanted to sulk at Starbucks and write about it (let me tell you, that would NOT have been a good blog post). However, I arrived a bit early to pick up the girls, and the pastor informed me that they were learning about salvation with his wife. My heart was overjoyed, and I knew that that’s why God had me stick around to do my job last week, and even more so why he led me away from other summer job opportunities including applying for Kanakuk myself or being a cheer coach at my high school.

The girls and I have had conversations about God before, but after being saved, their little minds were generating curious questions faster than I could answer, and I have never felt more honored that God chose me to be their nanny. I’d been praying that they would become my sisters in Christ for over a year now, and God finally answered.

The second day of VBS, I stuck around, and then God put it on my heart to give each of the girls one of my own girlhood Bibles that I received around the time I accepted Christ into my heart for the first time. Even after all of the shopping (my job is tough, isn’t it?) we did this past week, both girls agreed that the Bibles were their favorite things they got.

And so, after the final day of VBS and a lazy, rainy afternoon, I left my girls and prepared to head to the airport to catch my first flight. Storms in the Kansas City area were raging, but I wasn’t afraid, and I wasn’t going to cower down to the storm even when my flight was delayed nearly an hour, giving me mere minutes of time between my first flight’s landing and my connecting flight’s departure. As the first plane endured more turbulence than I had ever experienced, I began to pray harder than I ever had before.

And then we landed, and I was ready to run. I was off the plane minutes after my connecting flight’s departure time, and I had already received an email that the airline had picked another flight to LAX for me, departing 12 hours later. But I persevered, even after initially running the wrong way in the terminal, and I began praying out loud as I ran through the airport. Finally, I stumbled, breathless, onto my original flight to LAX moments before they closed the gate. God held the plane for me. There is no other explanation.

As I caught my breath, I thanked God (imagining him as a child playing with a toy plane), and I started thinking about my boyfriend. I couldn’t wait to tell him about my entire week and the big ways that God showed up, and then it all made sense to me. The memory verse for VBS was Luke 1:37, which says, “For with God, nothing is impossible.” I’m sure a lot of people can just read that verse and believe it’s true, but for me, it took something as big as a plane to show me that God is on my side, and He has a plan which most definitely includes the sweet little girls I nanny and my Jesus-loving, strong, handsome boyfriend.