Are you a reader? Do you ever cheat while trying to finish a book? Are you ever so desperate that you flip to the last few pages because patience feels impossible? This is how I feel at the beginning of my final quarter of college.

Each senior feels slightly different at this moment in our education; some don’t feel ready and others aren’t sure how to feel. Personally, I am ready. The last four years have been the most rich, but also the most grueling, and I am in great anticipation for June.

Graduation is not the only monumental event happening in June. I also get to marry my best friend. Exactly six days after we graduate together, we will get to enter into a grand adventure that will last for the rest of our lives. We get to run up mountains, traverse valleys and replace mundane days with laughter and love.

This man stole my heart here at Seattle Pacific University. Back in 2019, it was Otto Miller Hall that provided ‘accidental encounters,’ and Royal Brougham that hosted our afternoon spikeball tournaments. This university has played a role in our becoming, and I will never forget that the beginning of our family sprouted here in Seattle.

In addition to marriage and graduation, I also get to fully invest in a calling that I am deeply passionate about. It’s nothing new, and nothing lucrative, but completely bursting with potential.

I work at a coffeehouse; one in which I get to carry out the Great Commission as I pull shots of espresso and steam milk. This might sound entirely underwhelming, but my dreams don’t stop at being a barista. Instead, this position is a launching pad to the dream that has carried me through my undergraduate degree. I want to open and operate my own breakfast restaurant.

Without this hope for my future, I would have surely failed a dozen different courses. I will graduate with a degree in business administration, and while I navigated accounting, macroeconomics and data analytics, I clung to my dream, because without it, I would have given up.

The last four years have been exhausting. They’ve been the most painful and have been filled with the most trials. And yet, God planted a dream in my heart and He’s been faithful to remind me of what I’ve been working towards.

As I aspire to entrepreneurship, I am building a foundation to something I can only imagine. I have no idea how I’ll fund my idea, nor do I currently have the expertise required to execute this mission. But I’m not afraid. I’ve been inspired to “Go after a dream that is destined to fail without divine intervention (Batterson).” That is precisely my intention, and graduation is not the first, but one of many steps that I am taking towards pursuing this dream.

Part of me still wants to be that cheat reader and skip to the end, but while I am tempted to feel desperate for the final chapter, I don’t want to miss out on what God has for me between today and graduation. I will not let this anticipation rob me of soaking in the now.

So as I look ahead to both commencement and marriage, I have to remember that each passing day is an opportunity to add an individual brick to whatever it is exactly that God is building in my life. There are still three more months in which God can do miraculous work. He is not finished with this year, and so neither am I.