It's no secret that teenagers have no idea where they're going in life. Yet some time in your senior year of high school, you're supposed to have your life figured out.
But we all know plans fail. Throughout high school I was told countless times, "You'll change your major so many times," or "High school relationships never work out." Even the little comments of "You'll never keep friends after high school," and "You'll go away to college and never come back," seemed to nag at me.
As we're rushed to make all of these plans, we're still told they'll change. It really seem like we're going into college or our careers in a leap only hoping we're going in the right direction. In my life, that means trusting God to lead me to the plans he has for me. This brought me to one conclusion.
God's plans ruin all of mine.
In every part of life, before and beyond teenage years, trusting God's plan tends to ruin all of our own. That town you grew up in? His plan involves you leaving. The boy that your young heart secretly wanted to marry? You'll have to tell him God doesn't want you together. That friendship you thought God had brought together? It will have to end when God leads you down a new path. That career you wanted? You'll have to give it up for less pay because God has called you to different dreams.
Trusting God means quickly finding out that your life is not your own. Sometimes God's plan for your life doesn't involve your comfort zone. God's plan may not even include your lifelong best friend or the dreams you've had since you were seven.
We get so confused when God takes our lives in His direction when that's the opposite of ours. How many times do we ignore the voice of God because what He has to say is so far out of our plans? In these times of confusion, I am reminded of God's promises. In the story of Esther, she became a queen against all odds. I'm sure that that wasn't anywhere in her plans for life. Then, she is told to risk her life so that the king may spare her people. God took her original plan and changed it for good; she got to marry the king. She was suddenly a woman of royalty rather than an orphan. After all of this, in another plot twist, God tells her that she needs to go before the same king and beg for the life of her people even though he had every right to kill her.
"And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?" -Esther 4:14
In Esther's situation, she was called out of her comfort zone, not once but twice. Every plan she made for herself was blown out of the water by the will of God. I'm sure that Esther didn't feel like risking her life at the hands of her new husband. There's no way she could've seen the end of the story to find out that it works out wonderfully. All she could see was the fear of death of her people or herself. There's no way it could've worked out in her favor.
On this side of our struggles all we see is the ruin. All we see is the destruction that will take place. When God breaks our plans we tend to focus on everything that is going to change, but we can't see how it will change for our good. It's in these times that we learn that faith is blind. God can tear apart a lifelong friendship, He can move you far away from your hometown, and He will even end a relationship that you've spent so much of your time in. We don't see in that moment that He's preparing you for something that friendship was holding you back from, the lives you will touch in your new town and the husband that He has for you.
It is so true when they say that He makes beauty from ashes. Looking back, I am thankful for every single plan that I made for myself that He ruined. He's preparing me for something that I don't have my eyes set on, because I can't even imagine it yet.
