I love performing. I’m pursuing my degree in musical theatre because when I perform I feel like I’m doing what I was made to do. Those two sentences are a little painfully cliche but it’s still the truth so I’ll leave them for right now.

This year like many other musical theatre loving 17/18 year olds I travelled around the United States auditioning for college programs. I wore the solid color dresses and nude heels and spent hours reapplying deodorant and warming up just to let someone in a two minute audition decide if I was ‘worthy’ of their school. Sounds fun right?

I’ve been in lessons for nine years, been involved in practically everything I could, and, along with my family, made countless sacrifices to pursue what I love. Everyone my whole life has told me I’ll go far, I’ll be famous, I’ll be on Broadway, I’ll have my pick of schools, etc.

Now as sweet as that is for people to say, it made me feel a lot of pressure this year. I was auditioning for programs knowing people expected me to get in, they expected me to be great, they expected me to be this idea of a “successful” performer, which in their eyes was to be famous, known, a future broadway star.

So imagine how hurt I was when I got rejection after rejection from schools. I wasn’t crying over it becauseI couldn’t handle the rejection or because I thought my hopes and dreams were over—but because I was ashamed and scared to let people down—to let them know I had failed.

Here’s the thing though—rejection doesn’t make you bad, it doesn’t mean you will never succeed, and it doesn’t mean you are not talented. Rejection tells you that this time, this place, this role, this thing wasn’t the RIGHT one for you. The reasons why we don’t get what we want aren’t always clear to us—goodness knows I STRUGGLED with that this year. I had so many ideas of what school I should go to, what my life HAD to look like, and what my senior year was going to be—and when things weren’t going my way I was so confused and even upset with God.

Why would He give me this gift, this passion, this love inside me to perform, just to close all the doors I try to go through? Needless to say, I was wrong. I was completely wrong. And although I didn’t see it at the time, my plans were/are inferior to God’s plans. The plans and expectations other people had of me are not truly defining of what success or happiness or fulfillment looks like. Would it be nice if all those great dreams came true? Yes of course. But are they what measure my success? No.

I hadn’t failed, I just hadn’t lived up to other people’s ideas of what my life was going to look like, and when you use other people’s opinions as a measure of your success as a human being—you will ALWAYS fail.

So, God didn’t close all my doors. He opened one very widely and had to close every other one and PUSH me through the very clearly open door (because I’m stubborn, let’s be honest) for me to finally give in to what is truly right for me.

I think this applies to so many areas of life. So often we are so busy looking at all these doors and things we want and ignore the incredible thing God has placed right in front of us. We get mad, we get upset, we begin to have thoughts of self doubt because we are seeing all of these ‘closed doors’ when really they were never right for us in the first place.

I’m now attending an incredible school that I have loved since the moment I set foot on campus to pursue my degree in Musical Theatre. Rejection and God knowing best got me where I was supposed to go and now I’m so grateful for it. I repeated to myself over and over again this year, “every no is one step close to a yes.” It took me all year but I found my yes, what’s yours?