Questioning all in a new environment

I recently graduated from college and have been thrown very quickly into the "adult" world, a world that is radically different from the one I am used to.

Transitions like this are difficult for me. I am not good at them. I am not good at being the new person, not good at not knowing what I am doing. I am not good at being OK with feeling like an outsider, not good at being patient with myself and others as I become accustomed to a new environment and begin to establish relationships with new people.

As much as I want to like change and crave it, once I have the change I crave stability. I crave the comfort of knowing who I am in a stable place. In a stable place, I know that I am loved by the people surrounding me, people who know me and whom I know. In a stable place, I also know who God is.

In new environments there is room to question everything. Suddenly I feel as if I again am a younger version of myself, wondering how people perceive me and wanting to be liked, a desire from which I want to be delivered.

My views of God, too, no longer go unquestioned when I am presented with people who have different views of who God is. Different people's views of God can leave me wondering if we even know the same God at all, can cause me to question if I am following the "right" God and knowing who God truly is, or if I'm just making up my version of Him and fooling myself.

In the prayer by Thomas Merton called "Thou Art Not as I Have Conceived Thee," Merton asks God for detachment from the world so he can better know God, wanting not to "light any lights of [his] own" or to be "crowded" with any thoughts of his own, but only to sit and wait in the darkness for God.

He ends his meditation like this: "Your brightness is my darkness. I know nothing of You and, by myself, I cannot even imagine how to go about knowing You. If I imagine You, I am mistaken. If I understand You, I am deluded. If I am conscious and certain I know You, I am crazy. Darkness is enough."

When I am unsure if I know God or unsure if I know who he is, maybe that is when I know him best. Maybe that is when my faith most becomes like that of a little child, not caught up in details, but open and caught up in trust. That is when my faith becomes a choice, my choosing to trust that maybe I don't have to know for God to still be God and teach me about Himself.

Mia Pohlman is a Perryville, Missouri, native and a recent graduate of Truman State University with a bachelor's degree in English.