I’m a planner. I like lists and to know what’s happening in the next day, week, and sometimes month ahead. I color coat my planner and calendars (yes, I keep more than one!) and live by them.
I’m very much a Type A personality and I can be a control freak depending on what the situation at hand is. So like all planner-types, I had a plan for my future.
Since about fourth grade, I had wanted to be an archaeologist. World history fascinated me and I wanted to learn as much about the world and the people in it as possible. From about seventh grade on, I started researching schools for history and archaeology degrees. I already had my search narrowed down to around five institutions by the time I was a sophomore in high school and knew the general direction I wanted my life to take. I contacted local archaeologists and stared looking into what type of jobs were available for the degree I would be pursuing.
Before junior year, I did some looking for jobs in the Midwest near where I lived. Turns out, Indiana and Illinois don’t offer too many opportunities for archaeology…Who would have guessed? I still thought I knew what I wanted to do with my life, though, and would just make minor adjustments to the plan as I went along. At the beginning of my junior year, I began tutoring a student who went to a local high school in science and English. She struggled quite a bit, but we stuck with it and by the end of the first semester, she had made it on Honor Roll. I was beyond proud of her and knowing that I helped her self-confidence blossom as much as it did made me feel incredibly warm and fuzzy inside. I also had been working with Special Olympics athletes for about a year and a half at this point. The teens I worked with made such an impact on my heart, I knew I had to continue working with them in some aspect.
These both were heavy on my heart, and I wasn’t satisfied with my future plans like I had been before. Then something kept coming across my path that I had seen dozens of times before, but never really noticed:
“’For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord. ‘Plans to prosper you and not harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.’” Jeremiah 29:11
Wow. Talk about something that rocked my world.
From then on out, I decided to (albeit slightly reluctantly) let go of my plan and list for my life and let God lead. I am now studying to be a special needs elementary teacher who is working with college students as the young adult minster at a church near my campus. That is nowhere near what I thought I would be doing with my life in my early 20s. But you know what? I love every bit of it. I am excited for my life, even though it’s not one I had imagined for myself.
Sometimes you have to let go. While having a well-thought-out plan is something that makes me feel safe, knowing God has my path already laid out in front of me gives me a sense of peace I never would have gotten if I had followed my personal plan.
Sometimes you have to trust. I had things well-thought out, researched, and pro-con listed in a way that would have made Rory Gilmore proud; even with all my planning, I am trusting my future to Someone who knows what I want and need even more than I do.
Sometimes you have to have faith. Would I like to know where my life is going or why I’m in the season of life I am? Yeah, I would. But I know that having faith that God has me where I am for a specific purpose is even more important.
“Perhaps this is the moment for which you have been created.” Esther 4:14b
So even if you don’t know what your future holds (FYI…none of us do. And that’s OK.), you can know the One who holds it has great things for you if only you’ll let Him work in and through you.
