When I was younger I always pictured myself going to college, getting a fashion degree, and being married by the time I was 22. GOALS. Yet here I am at 23 with no degree and no husband. And you know what? THAT. IS. OKAY. Because I have found out so many things about myself in the past five years that I never would have learned had I stuck to "my plan".

Going into my junior year of college I had this gut feeling that I was not where I should be. My friends that I had made my freshman year started to disappear, I was not interested in my classes, and I just felt this overwhelming sense of anxiety because this was not what my plan was supposed to look like. As a girl who did not have a lot of friends in high school, I just knew that college was going to be where I made all my lifelong friendships. I would have a ton of friends, go to all the parties, and just LOVE my classes. But there I was finding myself far away from that feeling.

After personally struggling and debating about what to do I decided to ditch the plan. I changed schools, degrees, cities, and I joined the Air National Guard. Don't be fooled, everything did not just do a 180 for the better. After completing my first semester at my new school and then taking a break during the Fall semester to go to Basic Military Training, that is when it started to click. I am not in control.

WOW.

HELLO.

WAKE UP MACKENZIE.

This whole time I had built these expectations and 'perfectly' planned ideas of what I wanted my life to look like but it did not matter because it was never MY plan. God had already scripted my perfect plan and all the while I have been spinning my wheels and trying to figure out how to make my plan fit into what God had already done. I wanted to make myself big and God small.

But guess what? No plan that I could dream of or create can even compare to what God has already written out for me.

So if you find yourself feeling the same way I did, constantly beating yourself up and bearing the weight of 'failure' as you watch your plan crumble in front of you, then I want to leave you with a sense of encouragement and understanding.

Just let go. Yes, way easier said than done when we live in a world full of chaos and all we want is to grasp on to our beautiful plan and it's the certainty. But we are grasping onto the wrong plan.

Be faithful even in the unknown. Webster's dictionary defines faithful as, 'steadfast in affection or allegiance', so what does that mean to me and you as college students trying to find our way? We can be faithful in knowing that if God sent His only son to die a death that we deserve then who else would we want to sculpt 'our plan'? We can have peace knowing that our plan is resting in the hands of a Mighty Father willing to give His all for our best.