At the close of the last semester, I had every reason to believe that I’d be offered another teaching assistantship for the fall semester. Two instructors had approached me saying that they would like to have me as a TA–but the word around the department was that another person, a professor, was also interested in having me TA for her. <\/p>\n
I made my plans accordingly. I had enough money in my checking account to live on throughout the summer. I would spend the summer working on my thesis and then take the assistantship in the fall. Come December, if I had not already found a job, I had enough money in my savings account to last 4-6 months while I searched for a job. I considered it a comfortable margin.<\/p>\n
And so I proceeded.<\/p>\n
But when May passed and June passed and July started to pass me by without receiving an assistantship offer, I had to assume that I would not be offered an assistantship. I started searching for positions in the Lincoln and Omaha area (having promised my roommate I’d remain in Lincoln until December.) <\/p>\n
Today, I received a phone call from a University number–nothing surprising for me since I’d applied for several positions at the University.<\/p>\n
But the call was not from one of those positions. It was from the Nutrition Graduate Department’s Administrative Assistant. <\/p>\n
“Hi, Rebekah,” she said. “I’m getting ready to process payroll for the fall and realized that I still hadn’t received an acceptance from you for your assistantship.”<\/p>\n
“That’s interesting,” I replied. “I hadn’t heard that I received an assistantship.”<\/p>\n
But I had received an assistantship–and she’d emailed me the offer May 7, the last day of classes for fall semester. When I hadn’t promptly returned my acceptance, she e-mailed me again.<\/p>\n
I received neither e-mail.<\/p>\n
This time, she forwarded me the letter and I received it just fine.<\/p>\n
She explained that I should pay no attention to the deadline for acceptance. She’d process my payroll papers and I could mail or drop off my acceptance any time. <\/p>\n
So I have a job through December. I have the whole time. The rumors were true and I’ll be working with the professor. <\/p>\n
A bizarre turn? <\/p>\n
Absolutely.<\/p>\n
Fate or luck?<\/p>\n
I’m not willing to say that.<\/p>\n
I believe that God is sovereign over every event of my life–even over misdirected or otherwise lost e-mails. <\/p>\n
Why were both of those e-mails lost? <\/p>\n
Maybe God wanted me to learn trust. Maybe God intends me to have one of these jobs I’ve applied for and knew I wouldn’t have applied for them if I had been secure in the knowledge of the assistantship. Maybe I’ll never know God’s plan in this.<\/p>\n
But one thing I know: God knew exactly the moment each of those e-mails entered the ether–and He had a perfect plan for when and how and why things would turn out the way they did.<\/p>\n
Because my life does not rest on the caprices of fate, but in the hands of a sovereign, all-powerful, all-loving God.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At the close of the last semester, I had every reason to believe that I’d be offered another teaching assistantship for the fall semester. Two instructors had approached me saying that they would like to have me as a TA–but the word around the department was that another person, a professor, was also interested in … Read more A bizarre turn I\u2019m unwilling to ascribe to fate<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[37,9],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3956"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3956"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3956\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}