I did not get in to Oxford.

And rejection doesn't feel like it used to.

I did not get in to Oxford. It’s all a bit hazy.

The admissions officer sounded flustered and sorry on the phone. Turns out there were only 2 part-time spaces available this year, which was less than they thought there would be. She mentioned something about having more ordinands than anticipated, and something about being physically unable to take on more part-time students because of fire codes in the building.

“It’s literally come down to that,” she said.

I still don’t fully “get it,” but my suspicion is that full-time students take priority, and then they supplement with any part-time positions which might be left. I don’t know. Regardless, it doesn’t really soften the sting.

I’ve been told that I’m literally at the top of the waitlist, and if someone drops out, I’d be the first person offered a place. “I’m confident we’ll be offering you a place later this year,” she reassured me.

And that didn’t really soften the sting either. (Let’s be real here: if I was “good enough,” I’d have been offered one of those two places.)

But would you like to know what does soften the sting?

The realisation that for the first time in my life, losing a dream is not making me question whether God sees me, or hears me, or cares, or invests in my life.

When my student loans fell through in 2014, and I thought I was going to have to quit my degree and move back to the US, I questioned whether God saw me.

When my visa applications were jeopardised, and I was losing sleep and battling with HR departments to get the stacks of paperwork I needed in order to remain in my country, I questioned whether God heard me.

When Covid hit, and our wedding fell apart, and we ended up in a lawsuit with a wedding vendor who stole £3K from us, and I discovered that I had to back-file 5 years’ worth of taxes with the US because I didn’t understand the filing laws properly, and my husband’s beloved grandfather died, and our house sale fell through days before we were due to sign the contracts, and the family cat died, and my husband and I were newlyweds who were both spiralling into the deepest depression of our lives while locked in a tiny house packed floor to ceiling with boxes, and the family dog died, and I was on antidepressants that numbed every emotion apart from rage, I questioned whether God cared.

When my job working at a Christian non-profit turned into such a spiritually toxic and oppressive environment that I felt myself slipping away into a state of numbness from which I thought there was no return, I questioned whether God was invested in my life.

Now? I question literally none of it.

I can sit here in my wounded pride (because I can’t shake the feeling that “waitlist” means “second best” even though I know, practically, that this isn’t true) and my confused heart, and I can cry; but these tears are just the natural fruit of hopes deferred. I grieve, but rather than feeling like God is distant from my grief, I feel Him draw near to me in it.

I know He told me to apply. I don’t know why, but I know He did. And not receiving the outcome that I wanted doesn’t change this.

Suddenly, I understand a little piece of what it means to truly surrender: to embrace the truth that God’s goodness is in no way gauged by my own expectations – rather, it consumes my expectations. Every time.

His goodness is in the unexpected turn of the weather mere hours after I got the phone call so that the sun shone down on my face.

His goodness is in the fact that my dog’s gut and my spine were stable enough to then go for a run down the canal — a small glimpse of health I wasn’t sure either of us would experience together.

His goodness is in the canal itself — the fact that we live somewhere that heaps upon us the grace of sunshine and water, of vibrant greens and blues, of the birdsong and colour I spent my desert childhood longing for.

His goodness is in the name of the canal boat that stopped me in my tracks as I processed what it means to be rejected by all — but not by Him: Peace at last.

Deferred hopes are no benchmark for how much He sees me, hears me, cares for me, and invests in me. And they’re no benchmark for you, either.

These aren’t just flowery words. I can feel it. Literally, I feel His nearness in the room. I feel swallowed by tenderness. And thus my work to worship Him, Oxford or no, continues.

All my love,