Life, I had a plan. Graduate High school. Go to University. Obtain Bachelors of Science. Get Married. Travel. Apply to Med School. Have Children. Go to Med school and obtain PhD. Live the life I dreamed.
My five year plan, it was perfect in every way. It sounded amazing and so easy to obtain. I wanted to be married by the time I was 25 with at least one child, because you know 25 is so so old. I had big plans that I was so excited for, until I wasn’t.
From the moment High school started coming to a close, my plans were completely wrecked. I was offered athletic scholarships down south and in no way was I expecting it, but was very much planning to stop my athletic career after high school. I went with it and a year later I found myself returning home and to schooling in Canada. What that year taught me was that Science is just not my thing and as I was applying back to school at home, a program caught my eye, Child studies, but at the time it was just a certificate and I had my heart set on a degree, so I pushed past that urge and desire in my heart for child studies and applied to Science once again.
In 2013, I was diagnosed with a small tumour on my right shoulder, which lead me to 3 weeks filled with questions, depression, loneliness and hardships, as well as the confirmation that med school was not for me, yet I still pushed through.
In 2014, I was put onto academic probation, which essentially means if I don’t get my act together I am going to be kicked out of the program. I pushed through and upped that GPA.
In 2015, I sat in class and googled travel destinations, missions, young adult discipleship programs and dreamed of actually doing what I wanted. I came across the World Race, pressed apply and than I promised myself after I get that degree, I can follow these new found dreams. I pushed through.
You see I had this habit of pushing the doors open. As I reflect back I can see now God was so evidently shutting those doors.
Man, am I stubborn. The more I look at it, I realize it was the insecurity in who I was. I let the pressures of this world determine what I wanted for my future. Money and success is what I was chasing after and while I knew who God was, I wasn’t following him and the plans he had set out for my life. I was following my plans and asking him to tag along.
I look at that and I also see God’s grace. The path I have taken to get to where I am now was long, twisting, filled with failures, disappointments, loneliness, pushbacks questions and trials. I am no where close to where I would have expected myself to be at 27, in fact I am quite opposite of where I expected to be.
I am 27, single, childless, with no degree, working for minimum wage and living in my parents house. Wow, I am living the dream!! To say that out loud actually stings a little bit. I am 27 and feel like a failure when I look at myself through the world’s eyes. I battle these lies on the daily and have to consistently remind myself to speak truth over those lies.
But God has grace and has so graciously comforted me in these times. I reflect back and I can see his hand in my life, even if I couldn’t see it at the time. Each and every door I pushed through, He grabbed that wheel and kindly veered me back to the straight and narrow.
He took me on this journey of stripping me down, building me back up, refining who I was in Him and opened my eyes to who He created me to be. He re-awakened who I truly was and told me to stop being someone that I thought I was…ouch!
So, here I am telling you I am done pushing doors. Once a door is shut and I can so evidently see that it is supposed to stay closed I will wait and I will listen for the opening of another door. I will listen to that still small voice and always ask for His direction. I am ready and expectant to see the next journey the Lord has for me, as I have seen and experienced that a life following Him is way better than any life I could ever think up or plan.
He has humbled me and made me confidant where I am over and over. He continues to pick me up when I fall. I may not be where I thought I would be, but I am exactly where I need to be and that is all that matters.
I am happy to say this past year has been one that was hard not to just push doors open. Back in November I was at a worship night praying for my next steps. I had just applied for the Child Studies program at MRU and was pleading for God to make a way. Again I was trying to push that door open, when God so clearly said, what if that is not my plan for you? Are you okay with no degree? Are you okay with the way I want to take you? It stung and it took me 5 months to accept and tell people school wasn’t for me, God was shutting that door. I let it shut and stay closed as I got my letter of being waitlisted once again. I was okay with it, as I knew God had other plans to make our dreams come true. It took me 5 months to accept what He had told me.
As I reflect on that I realize that the Lord knows me better than I know myself. He knows what I find my identity in and the areas I still struggle to be confidant in. You see I still found that being successful was having a degree, I have 5 years of education under my belt but felt like a failure as there is no piece of paper to say that I was smart or accomplished. As soon as I was okay with not going to school and taking a leap of faith of where the Lord was taking me, he opened that door. He said you are confident and where I am taking you, and in order to accomplish that I am taking you back to your where you have always wanted to go. Lets do it together. I didn’t have to push the door open, he opened it for me, but first He had to teach me a very valuable humbling lesson. As I prepare to start school this fall semester as child studies student, I couldn’t be more excited, but this time I am letting the Lord lead and I know it will be an amazing time as I get to watch my vision and my God given dream slowly come to life.
‘I want to live in Holy anticipation, knowing that God can invade the reality of life at any given moment and change everything for eternity’ -Mark Batterson
