If college has taught me one thing, it's this: You can try and plan out your life and your future, but if it does not match up with God's plan for you, it's not going to happen. As I approach graduation, I have a different major than I started with, I am not attending graduate school like I've intended to do for the past three years, and I definitely am not working in my former "dream" career field. I thought I would join a sorority. I didn't expect to have been single my entire time at this university. But, it's okay, because I know I am not the one in control.
I'm the kind of person who needs to have a plan. I am extremely organized; I basically live out of my planner. But no matter how much I thought I wanted a certain path in my life, the big man upstairs has always steered me in a different direction. I spent so much of my college career planning what I wanted to do with my life, yet I never once stopped and asked God if it was what He intended for me. Months before I planned to graduate and start a doctorate program, something in my heart was holding me back. I finally stopped to realize that all along, I'd been fighting God's plan with my own. How incredibly lucky are we that God knows our hearts better than we do?
That doesn't go to say that giving it all up to Him is easy. Actually, it can really suck. Planning something and working so hard to achieve it just to have God lead you in a different direction can feel disappointing and SO scary. But as Christians, it's all about trusting Him.
Faith in the Lord is about fully and blindly trusting in what He is doing in your life. It's about believing that God is NEVER finished with you. He has carefully and purposefully created every single detail about you and will continue to shape you until the day you leave this Earth. It's scary to think about, but how incredible is it that we can not even begin to imagine the plans He has for us? Your future career, your future spouse and children, the people who will shape your character, the places you will go... it is easy to stick to what you think you want and what is easy, but you will never be fulfilled in your life if you don't live out His plans for you. Plain and simple.
It's okay to be scared; it's okay to be skeptical. It's okay to feel like He's not working in your life the way you so badly want Him to be. It's okay to feel lost, because man, when you finally realize you are following the path He created for you, you'll never feel more found. It won't be quick and easy easy, and it won't go without a few bumps in the road. But trust me when I say that every obstacle you will face in your life will only create a stronger and greater version of yourself. He is continuously molding you into who you're meant to be, and I don't know about you, but that is where I find my comfort through the constant struggles.
“But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord,
whose confidence is in him.
They will be like a tree planted by the water
that sends out its roots by the stream.
It does not fear when heat comes;
its leaves are always green.
It has no worries in a year of drought
and never fails to bear fruit.”
Jeremiah 17:7-8
