This week I had the great privilege of being a worker at Picket Lake children’s camp. It has been nearly 15 years since I was last there. It was almost surreal walking around the place that helped dictate the direction of my life.

You see, I was a 19 year old college student the first time I worked at Pickett Lake. My college friends talked me into helping lead a bible study for older girls and also leading a juggling track. I did not have a long history of working with children at that point and I really had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I made so many great friends that week and fell in love with all of the kids.

On the last day of camp, my new friend Margaret came up to me and asked if I wanted a job. She said that I would be a great fit at the small Christian school where she worked and wanted me to consider coming on staff as a paraprofessional. Teaching wasn’t even on my radar, but here I was standing face to face with a job offer.

What she didn’t know was I had just finished my AA and had no clue what was next. She didn’t know that I could not get into the college of my choice and was now stuck in Madison. She didn’t know that I had just signed up to take the TABE test in order to get into the CNA program at the college. And she definitely didn’t know that her simple question was about to change my whole life’s direction.

As I started working at the school, I quickly realized teaching was something I was good at. Before long I was put in charge of a small group of kids underneath another teacher and I essentially became their teacher. FAMU had a teaching program at NFCC and soon I enrolled and quickly discovered the direction of my life. All of this happened because one person seeing something in me that I would have never recognized myself.

This year as I walked around Pickett Lake’s campus, I just smiled. God used such a simple situation to change the course of my life. Not only did I become a teacher, but now I teacher teachers how to teach. I am so thankful my college friends convinced me to come with them to camp. I’m even more grateful that my friend took the time to see something in me that I didn’t see. As I look back, I’m amazed at how God has had his hand on me even when I didn’t realize it was him doing the leading.

God is always on time, even when we don’t see the big picture. Like the old song says, “Even when you can’t see his hand, trust his heart.”