The question has a theistic tone.  I don't mean it to.  I don't believe in the same kind of God that most people do.  You know, the one that sits there in the great beyond and has a plan for your life...  The eternal clockmaker or the eternal meddler depending on who you prefer.  But even an atheist spiritualist like myself (atheist meaning I don't believe in a theos, or a classical God, not that I don't believe in a God beyond definition, a life force that we call God for lack of better words) sometimes wonders what to do. 

My spiritual practice defaults back to seeking "God's will" that was driven into me as a Evangelical and I find myself unconsciously mouthing words to prayers that I know by heart but no longer believe.  Be that as it may, I have a plan to work out.  As I head into advent I'm finally becoming a member of the United Church but I'm also stuck in a two+ year waiting period until the next chapter of my life unfolds.  In the mean time, I go to work, pay my bills, go to Church, go to sea, workout, and read privately the things that I think will help me most.  I guess I feel like I'm in a rut before I've even gotten there.  My career, the thing that I actually want to do with my life cannot start until I've finished two years just being.  Just being a part of a congregation and learning and growing until the minimum time required is up and I can start my discernment.  

I don't want to be a Navy Engineer.  I want to go back to school NOW, I want to begin to work formally in the Church NOW, and I want to know that it's actually going to happen.  But for two years I'll have to make decisions, work at my job, continue on and have faith in I don't know what, that after these two years my application to Seminary will work out, my application to the military Chaplaincy will work out, and my discernment process will recommend me as a Candidate for Ordination to Military Chaplaincy.

Hoping and having faith would be so much easier if I knew what I had faith in...  If my conclusions are correct and God is the life-force that binds us and permeates the universe then how do I supplicate it?  How do I ask it to be kind and look favourably on me?  Or is having hope and not being able to have control over the outcome (by doing the right thing or praying the right thing, or getting to know "God's Will for my life") the reason why faith is so hard?  Maybe that's what hope really is?  Having faith and not giving up while relying that things that you cannot control will happen...  Accepting the things that do happen as true, real, and unchangeable, and yet not giving in to depressed stoic fatalism.