Wow, five months have passed faster than I have imagined! I’m going to just talk about several experiences from CGA but *SPOILERS* it’s all about intentionality. Ironic because I’ve only written one blog, right? So intentional.
These past five months have been a whirlwind to say the least! So many people have asked about what my experience has been, what I have learned, or what CGA has been about. Honesty, I still don’t fully know, but I’ll do my best to explain it as well as I can.
CGA is a discipleship program based on learning more about ourselves through introspection/self-awareness, psychology, counseling, deep dives into Christian living, scripture, journaling community, hard conversations, tears, laughter, joy, pain, boredom, and just about everything in-between. Each week we go over what it looks like to have boundaries, leading others who don’t want to be lead, hard conversations, the question “why should we lead?”, what’s our definition of success, can we cast a vision and a mission for ourselves and others, what sacrificing looks like, leaning into both our strengths and weaknesses and so much more. This discipleship program, to me, is years of failure and learning experiences all wrapped into 5 quick months. It’s a place that’s safe for us to fail and even encouraged! I have been given some of the most encouraging and difficult feedback of my life during this time. It has challenged me to pursue greatness in all things.
So, let’s ask the question, what does intentionality in life look like? Is it having every moment planned out? Is it always having the right answer and all things figured out? Honestly, ask yourself this question right now because you may have a very different view of intentionality throughout your life than another human. Take the time… I’ll wait…..
Okay, so, what does it look like for you? While you’re at it I’m going to give you a couple more questions that add on to this topic pretty well.
Why? Why do anything? Why change at all? You should be asking yourself ‘why’ all of the time. You may never truly know the ‘How’ and the ‘What’ until you know the ‘why’.
Define success. Not what other people think success means, but what success to you is. Is success getting an A on a test or anything above a D? If you’re not considered a “success” in your own mind does that automatically mean you’re a failure?
These past two years—going on the Race and being discipled at CGA—has humbled me so very much. It has given me so much perspective on my life and the question ‘Why?’. This is the foundation of every decision you’re going to make for the rest of your life. Why would you go to college instead of going to trade school? Why get married when being single is a great option too? We ask ‘why’ to see what we’re truly made of; it gives us a look into ourselves to see if we have the right heart and grit to push through and accomplish something. It’s intentional. As much as we all want beautiful things to sprout from nothing in our lives, that just doesn’t happen without intentionality.
Let me give you a few examples of how I’ve been practicing intentionality these past few months. Having people pursue friendship with you is one of the greatest feelings! You feel wanted, special, and have a great boost of confidence when someone says “Lets go get lunch sometime.” Oftentimes, we hate making the first move and potentially being rejected because how horrible is the feeling of rejection! It’s terrible. Guys, let me tell you, if I did not step out of my comfort zone and ask some people to be friends, I would have missed such wonderful friendship with some beautiful people. Sure, I might’ve become friends with some of them, but I would have wasted so much time. This is a small example, but how powerful are the small examples.
The second thing I learned intentionality with was college applications. Overwhelming is an understatement when it comes to college for me, but I set a goal for myself to sit down for 15 minutes a day and start my applications. I applied to four well known schools and guess what? I got accepted into four well known schools. Now, I am not at the end of the process. I haven’t officially picked which school I will be attending, but boy did it help so much to be intentional with this. I could have easily just opened an application one day, filled it out, and sent it in all on the same day, and that would have been intentional too! However, with such a big and scary thing like applying to college, I needed to break it up into bite-size pieces in order to accomplish the task and create the best application possible.
Friendships and school applications are just two small things I have learned to be intentional about. There is so much more in life that we can learn intentionality with. Kids, goals, dreams, reading, jobs, hobbies, people, free time, animals, desires, and just about anything. I’m learning what it looks like to live a life filled with intentionality and how wonderful that life could be. Isn’t it a far better alternative than living a life where things and life happen to us instead of us happening to life? If we lived that way then we would always be victims to our circumstances and blame something or someone for expectations that went unmet. Obviously, there are things and circumstances that are completely out of our control, but how do we react to those things? What will we respond with in wake of failures, disappointments, and hardship? My greatest hope is that we would be people that rise up above that and face the hard things, make plans, experience failure, dream, and become better people because of it. You don’t need a discipleship program for that. Let us all be people who are willing to risk everything find a life worth living.
I graduated CGA one week ago and have moved forward with life. Life has changed a lot for me, but it’s good. I will be going to school in the fall (for some sort of science to hopefully continue on to medical school), and finding out what it looks like to live a life of intentionality along the way.
If you have supported me or followed any of my journey through the past year and a half I just want to say thank you for emotional, spiritual, or financial support. It has meant the world to me!
Love,
Paul Daniel Duesing
