Plans

¹¹ For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope. --- Jeremiah 29:11

Occasionally, you find yourself with the opportunity to get to know yourself better. Sometimes it is something that you have searched for and about but have been unable to find. And sometimes you find yourself face to face with the opportunity despite the fact that you were dragged, kicking and screaming, not at all willingly to that point in time, at that exact place. You are faced with a choice- take the time you find yourself so suddenly with and use it constructively or lose your ever-loving mind. For myself, I decided to do a little bit of both. I lost my mind and cried and hurt and almost let my hurt determine my fate. Then, I wiped my eyes (and applied any number of remedies suggested by girlfriends to ease some of the swelling around them), took a deep breath, and decided to face the day.

I was deleting redundant status comments out of my facebook yesterday when I realized how often I had posted status messages stating that I really didn't know how much I could take- how far I could bend. If I could really handle what had been placed in my path. The more I thought about those status messages, the more I found myself thinking about other situations in my life over the past 6 months or so since I truly began to feel my faith and spirituality growing back in my heart. So often, I questioned if I was ready- for everything and anything.

It hit me, like a grand piano plummeting eight stories from the sky right on top of my head, that when it came to the plan for my life, for what I could and couldn't handle, I erroneously believed that my human anxieties regarding each situation made me a better judge of what I could handle and accept than even GOD could plan. So what if He had the base plans for my life laid out and that He knows my heart better than I could possibly- I still know better!

How vain. How faithless. How self-important.

Of course, I don't really know better than God the general twists and turns that map out how He sees my life meandering through this world. I believe firmly in free will and I don't feel that that conflicts with my belief that God does have an outline regarding my life. His plan is not a permanent marker dragged screeching over a sheet of paper putting down the exact path that you HAVE to take. His plan is a soft pencil drawing- possibly a charcoal sketch- where the basic shape is visible but each curve and turn is open to interpretation. You can choose to go left or right, back or forward, up or down. You have to decide what the final shape the artist's hand will have to layer in to the image. At each stage of the drawing, there is not more there for you to face or experience than what He knows that you can somehow handle and that you are capable of making work. It is only when you fail to trust that He would not put more in your hands or in your heart than you have ability to accept and embrace that you rip the charcoal from the artist's fingers and alter his plans, sometimes in ways that feel irreparable.

And boy, have I managed that one. Who hasn't, though? So few of us can say honestly that we haven't, at some point in time, showed so little faith that the choice we made was one that God already knew about and had written into the little moments that together make up our lives. Maybe you went off to college, young and naive and lost, and mistook physical affection for love, being drunk for feeling alive, and ended up a single mom. Maybe, like me when I was that young and naive and lost eighteen year old, you trusted so little in the fact that God knew what you could handle that you lost your mind. But maybe, God knew that you would reach that point in your life and it was part of how he had filled out the bones of the sketch of your life. Maybe you failed at a relationship you feel that you should have been able to salvage and can't wrap your head around the idea that you couldn't make it work. But maybe, just maybe, the test wasn't making the relationship work. The best way to flesh out that part of the drawing was accepting the things you cannot change in yourself and others and moving out of something unhealthy, trusting that He wouldn't put you in a position where the end of one thing necessarily means failure. Maybe drugs and addiction are the off page courses you've taken. But all along the way, there have been paths back onto the page, openings.

It's easy for me to believe this, because MY personal God is a loving God. He is a parent- like I do with my son, he goes out of his way to guide me along the right path, but if I'm determined to go my own way, to see what sort of trouble waits along that road, He reluctantly lets me. He makes certain there are multiple chances along that way for me head back in the other direction.

Once I came to these realizations, a cloud of anxiety lifted from my heart and my view of what was and is going on my life. Everything that is in front of me right now- from relationship situations that I would normally run as far from as I possibly could manage to work to family- is something that I am capable and READY to handle. He believes that I have the faith and the love and hope and ability to bend. Regardless of where things go or how things work out or which direction I decide to take when it comes to fleshing out His plans for me, the things happening right now are good and right and ones He believes I am ready to experience. So I'm finished with doubting Him. I will allow my heart to be led by his gentle guidance. Sure- I can't know for certain how His plans and free will will work in the hearts of those people surrounding me, so I don't know which direction this movable piece of art that is life is going to take. But I know that my path, the one I choose, will be one that strives to accept and live the idea that I wouldn't be at his moment if He hadn't seen some good coming from it. I will strive to find that good and carry it with me as I go.
New meaning, for me, to the phrase Let Go and Let God.

I want to end this with a pretty famous prayer that has always been a big part of my life. I am the daughter of an addict who has spent my entire life battling his addictions through the help of AA and NA (Narcotics Anonymous). This prayer is a keystone, for me, and very fitting, with the idea that I wouldn't be in this moment if I hadn't taken one of the paths back to the picture-in-progress that he left open for me because he knew I would be here, and he knew that at some point, I'd be ready for the moment I am in, right this very second.

The Serenity Prayer

God grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change;
Courage to change the things I can;
And wisdom to know the difference.