This happened a couple of years ago. Imagine standing in front of a brick wall that is twice your height with your nose touching the wall. Can you see passed the wall? That’s about how much into the future I can see because God put a wall up.
This really bothered me. Like really really bothered me.
See, I am a planner. Or maybe I should say I WAS a planner. When I got to college, it’s like I was injected with a planning steroid.
In high school, I had my whole life planned out. Or so I thought. I was going to go to college, go to medical school, become a forensic pathologist, make a lot of money, live in a huge house, get married to my long-time boyfriend. This was my plan in high school, freshman year of college, sophomore year… Then my boyfriend and I went our separate ways after 6 ½ years, and around a year later is when I surrendered my life to Christ.
Change. Of. Plans.
When my relationship ended, it didn’t bother me too bad because I was also a micro planner and found plenty of ways to keep my mind going. I was busy in school – taking full loads, working, doing research, and studying for classes and for the MCAT. To get everything done, I kept a very detailed planner. I planned my life down to the 15-minute slot of what I would be doing every day. It was insane! I don’t know how I did it… oh yeah, it was that planning steroid.
Then I met God.
That’s cool. Insert time for reading. Schedule studying around bible studies.
No problem. I still have my schedule.
But there was a problem. There weren’t enough hours on my calendar to do everything I thought I needed to do. Something had to give, or I had to give something up.
Around this time, I remember sitting on my bed in the dorm room with my calendar in my lap. I should also mention that I had already decided I didn’t want to go to medical school, so all things I had planned for my life the last 4 years were gone. Not happening. No marriage, no money, no medical school.
So I was looking at my planner, trying to find a plan B, I guess since plan A was no longer an option. As I was thinking and trying to plan (which usually came naturally), but I had nothing. I couldn’t plan anymore.
Like my brain went stupid.
I kept trying to think about the future, and it’s like there was a wall. For the first time in my life, I couldn’t plan or see my future. This really puzzled me.
I went on with life. Each day, I didn’t have a clue about what the day or my future would hold.
I quit planning out my life like someone quits smoking cold turkey.
This wall that’s up… I can’t see my future. I kind of like it… for the most part.
Before I went to Bali, Indonesia, it didn’t seem real. I didn’t know what was going to happen. Sometimes I didn’t even know what was happening in the moment until after it had already passed. But I know that God used us for his glory that week.
Training camp is coming up. It’s a time I never thought I would get to, but it’s here. It’s a time I couldn’t see on the other side of the wall a few months ago, but the wall has moved forward. God is slowly showing me where my next steps in life are to be taken. It requires patience and trust and obedience.
I have no idea what will happen at training camp. Now that the time has come, it feels so real and so right. We leave for 11 months in August. I can’t see a single day in that month, or the whole next year, or begin to imagine what the days might hold, but I know God has them planned for me. So I will walk by faith.
I will walk by faith as He guides me through this foreign land.
The scripture I am holding close is this:
Hebrews 11:8-9 It was by faith that Abraham obeyed when God called him to leave home and go to another land that God would give him as his inheritance. He went without knowing where he was going. And even when he reached the land God promised him, he lived there by faith – for he was like a foreigner, living in tents.
Ya’ll, during training camp (and maybe some the next year), I will be living in a tent. I feel like I am living the same life Abraham lived.
Maybe it isn’t a wall that God has put up. Maybe God has blind folded me and has taken me by the hand to lead me and surprise me. Maybe that’s why I can’t see the future. Or maybe I just don’t need to know the future or have everything planned out. Instead of rushing to where I am going, it’s nice to see what each day holds. I like looking back and seeing the accumulation of all God has done in each day of my life.
I’m at the portion of my life where people are always asking, “What are you going to do with your degree?” “What are you doing with the rest of your life?”
And how I dare I say I don’t know. I’ll just be told that I need to figure it out.
NO! I have been asked these questions since I graduated high school and people expect me to have everything planned out. I did for a little bit; so I thought…
But, IT IS OKAY TO NOT KNOW!
“Look here, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we are going to a certain town and will stay there a year. We will do business there and make a profit.” How do you know what your life will be like tomorrow? Your life is like the morning fog—it’s here a little while, then it’s gone. What you ought to say is, “If the Lord wants us to, we will live and do this or that.” Otherwise you are boasting about your own pretentious plans, and all such boasting is evil. Remember, it is sin to know what you ought to do and then not do it. James 4:13-17
Here is the most truthful answer I can give about what I want to do the rest of my life:
I want to spend the rest of my life working for the Lord. The pay for that is extraordinary.
Jesus replied, “Because you have so little faith. Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.” Matthew 17:20
