My Original Plan
I had so many great plans for my life. As I have just passed my 29th birthday (again - give or take a dozen or so years), I am seeing that there are things that were on my life list of "To Do's" that aren't going to get done. It also seems that there are far fewer things that will end up undone than checked off.
There are things I love like skiing, traveling, and even languages that I love. I don't think I will be able to ever ski again because my body would be in shreds after. I want to see Paris, Petra, Israel, and Italy, along with a couple of handfuls of other places, with my husband. But again, my body is not as cooperative, nor are my bank accounts. Flying hurts a lot. And then there are languages. I know a little French but would love to know a lot. I am marginal at Korean but would love to be fluent like my daughter. I think the experts are right that it is a lot easier to learn languages as children. And so, I need a new plan. I have always wanted to know how to play the piano. To be able to sit down at any piano and just play would be a thrill to me. We don't have the room for a piano where we live. Not even room enough for an electric one. So, for Christmas and entire year ago, I bought myself one of those roll out pianos so I could, at least, begin to learn. And yet, it is still in the box exactly where I put it once I unwrapped it on Christmas day (2020). I never made the time. Life threw a lot at me last year. That plan went out the window.
I evidently don't make very good plans. I mean, I do. And daily plans usually go really well. Sometimes. But what do we do when we begin to see that the original plan for our lives hasn't even started? What do we do when we see that the original plan we set out to follow isn't going to happen at all? I'm going to tell you what I am doing. I've been re-evaluating my life plan a lot of over the past year. I look at my life as a string of failures. I've failed at doing what I set out to do. I've failed in business more times over than I'll ever admit. I've failed at being a wife for the last 21 years. I've failed at being a mother. I've failed at accomplishing some of my great loves that were on the list to accomplish during my life. But, just what if, everything I originally set out to do wasn't my plan? What if I wasn't living MY plan from the beginning? What if MY plan was something bigger? Something smaller? Something totally opposite of what I had in mind but far more gratifying, far more fulfilling, far more important?
“My plan had exploded like a can of gas in a microwave. ”
I was living out my life plan up until I was 28. Well, even after that, if I'm being totally honest. Me, living out my life plan, doing what I wanted to do, how I wanted to do it, when I wanted to do it, and with whom I wanted to do it with, created a giant ticking time bomb. Like, nuclear. And it went off. Shit everywhere. My life was just a massive pile of shit. My plan had exploded like a can of gas in a microwave. It took a lot of time to clean up. It took a lot of time to heal my wounds and the wounds of others that had been hit by the shit and shrapnel. And then, I had no plan. God revealed to me that, even though my life had not gone the way He wanted, it was not all in vain. The pain was incredibly valuable. All of my failures were valuable. My life was valuable. There was going to be a new plan for my life. All I needed to do was trust the one that created my plan in the first place.
I know now that all my failures are important because they teach me every time how not to do it again. They teach me not only how to succeed but how to continually repeat that success. There is a freedom to live as God originally intended us to live. It comes at a price, though. We have to continually defer to the creator of the plan. We have to come to a place where we are rendered completely helpless without the creator of our plan so that we cling to the Creator. It is out of this weak place that we are able to bless the world. It is out of this place that we are blessed. It is out of this place that we discover our original plan.
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