Over the last few months I’ve really felt myself begin to understand the meaning of faith. It comes down to believing that what you are doing and who you are becoming is what and who you are meant to be. It is being able to find peace in your decisions and comfort in the unknown. For someone so used to planning every detail of my life, lessons in faith have been hard to learn and have never come easily. In the past, I have enjoyed feeling in control of my life and its direction, but as time has passed and life has intervened in my carefully laid plans, I have come to find that such control is impossible to maintain. And when your control fails, you must have faith.

I do not think it much matters what, or who, it is that I have faith in. But just that I have it. Faith that in the end — things will turn out as they must and as is right. This is not to excuse my role of responsibility in my own life, but rather to be able to survive and even find peace in the times when I cannot conceivably control my life in the way I would have liked to in the past. Sometimes things are quite literally out of our control and not our choice. In the aftermath of such instances we must do all that we can to piece things back together, all the while holding onto faith that everything else will fall into place in good time.

So what then is my role? To follow, as cheesy as it sounds, my heart into what I know I am passionate about and for. Of course, all the while I must keep practical goals in mind, but those are bendable and breakable. I go to Russia because I am passionate about Russia. If I did not go I would spend years of my life asking myself “what if?” and that is a question that always makes me shudder. A life of regret and wonder at “what could have been” is not attractive to me in the least and my best plan is to avoid it as much as possible. If I follow my dreams and follow what I love, then it will only follow that I will end up in a career that I enjoy and find worthwhile. If it means going down “the road less traveled” or doing things that seem ridiculous to those on the outside, then so be it.

I have faith that I will end up where I must and where is best for me; through a combination of carefully made choices and leaps into the abyss. Whatever will be, will be.