I've always been one to plan ahead. Look at my Pinterest, and it's easy to see that I’ve got it all figured out: from my wedding to my bucket list to the names of my future babies. So, it probably comes as no surprise that I had carefully imagined just what my college experience would look like as well. I was going to school in California. I could already see myself studying on the beach and driving into LA on the weekends. If nothing else, I was sure that I wanted to attend a smaller, private, Christian University somewhere on the West Coast. In fact, I applied to 7 schools, and 6 of them were just as I had described— I had my plan, and I had worked so hard to secure it. So when I was invited to interview for the top scholarship at my dream Cali school, it was as if it was all coming together before my eyes.

I was sure that I had discovered God’s will for me, but as the next few months went by, something inside me said otherwise: "Boise." Boise? Why couldn’t I stop thinking about Boise? You see, there was that 7th school I had applied to: a large, public, state school… in Southern Idaho. It just didn’t quite fit the criteria. Sure, it had been beautiful when I visited. I loved the city, loved the campus; but it didn’t match up with the future I had so carefully envisioned.

I guess you could say that I had no clue yet. No clue that what I was really doing was dressing up my own, flawed plan as God’s purpose for me. No clue that what was best for me was quite the opposite of what I was trying to force. No clue that my freshman year would be comprised of nothing less than a series of times where my plans fell through, but something better fell in to place.

So, for some reason, I started picturing myself wearing blue and orange. I traded in my dreams of the Pacific Ocean for ones of the Boise River. It was so unexpected, but it just felt “right.” Even to this day, I can’t explain it. I couldn’t tell you why my heart still said “Boise” when I received a letter containing almost a full-tuition scholarship to that dream school of mine in Thousand Oaks, California (doesn’t that just sound like paradise?) In the end, though, God had a different dream for me, and although I had no idea what freshman year was going to look like, I had a feeling that it was going to be alright.

My California dream was the first of many that I would have to surrender. Next, I watched as my roommate arrangements fell through time and time again. I threw my hands up in frustration when I got assigned my very last dorm choice. Not to mention how hard I cried when I went through formal recruitment and came up empty-handed. Nothing about freshman year went as planned, but I couldn’t be more thankful.

You see, God knew what I needed, and if I had had my way, I would have missed out on so much. My heart needed Boise more than I knew. It needed blue-turf game days, snowy foothills, bike rides, river floats, and mornings at Big City Coffee. My heart needed Sara, my sweet roommate that came along after all the other ones fell through. I needed her spontaneous dancing, her sense of humor, our late-night talks, and our uncanny similarities that so often left me saying “I thought I was the only one…” My heart, ironically, needed the concrete walls of Chaffee Hall. It needed movie nights in the common room, dance parties in the communal bathrooms, late nights spent with ten people crammed into our one little dorm room, and the floor-mates that turned in to my own little "family”. My heart needed Zeta, the newest sorority on campus who informally recruited me following the let down of formal rush. It needed the sisters I found, the opportunities that were offered to me, and the experience of starting something new on campus.

This May, as freshman year concluded, I packed up my things, moved out of my little dorm room, and drove home with tears in my eyes. If I’m being honest, I bawled the entire 9-hour drive home. Because I was leaving behind my favorite place, my favorite people, and the best year of my life yet. And to think, if I had gotten my way, I would have missed out on all of it. I would have never discovered Boise, Chaffee, Sara, Zeta, or all of the people that I got to love as a result. Maybe if I were writing this from a beach in California, things would be just as good. It's hard to know for sure. But all I know is that I wouldn't change a single thing about my freshman year, and something about the way my heart ached when I left Boise for the summer, tells me that I ended up exactly where I was supposed to be.

So, if you’re reading this with an anxious heart and fists clenched around the future that you’ve so carefully thought out, rest assured. You’ll end up where you’re supposed to be, with everything you never knew you needed, and maybe someday, you’ll look back and thank God that your plans didn’t work out.