What's Your Plan?

“I need to date someone for at least two years before I get engaged. Then I need at least a one-year engagement before I get married. Right now, I just don’t have time for a boyfriend though.” These were some of the things I used to say before I met my husband. It’s funny how you think you have things all planned out and then God buts in. 

I’m a planner. I like to know what’s going on and when it’s going to happen. I have to be able to wear the appropriate clothes and schedule my day accordingly. Even my plans often have backup plans! However, I am learning to let go and let God. 

Since I was a young girl, I thought I’d be engaged by 21, married by 23, and be pregnant with my first child by 25. When I was 25 years old and realized I hadn’t been on a date since I was 19, I got slightly concerned.

My plan was off track.

Like many others trying to avoid what I thought was the tragedy my life had become, I threw my time and efforts into work and spending time with friends and family. While working full-time, I went back to school to earn two more degrees. Sometimes I stayed at work until late at night. Even though I no longer lived with my parents, I visited them and other family members multiple times each week. I wasn’t home very often, but when I was, I was content drinking coffee and reading a book in my rocking chair on the porch. Sometimes I felt a little lonely though. So, I convinced myself the emptiness I was feeling was in my stomach instead of my heart and I settled for a snack. I was 28 years old when I met my husband. Almost everyone at our church had tried to convince us we should date, but I wasn’t having it. Neither was he for that matter. I claimed I was too busy with work to study some guy I didn’t even know, but God.

You know, sometimes I get irritated when I make a plan and God buts in. How dare He? Like He made the world and controls everything and can interrupt my plan or something!

I had learned to convince myself almost daily that I was content on my own. I was at peace with the life I had, or so I told myself and everyone else. But God had a different plan, and boy am I glad that He did. He knew how much I needed my husband in my life. I needed the security, love, laughter, and happiness. but I also needed the challenges that come with being a wife, particularly a wife that had been single for almost a decade!

I knew how to be on my own, and I was good at it! But we all know that we don’t grow if we stay in the same routine doing the same things. We grow when we’re faced with new challenges- like figuring out how two minds become one and four hands function as two. That’s a challenge! I had heard in church and at weddings my whole life how a marriage is when two people become one, but I never fully grasped that concept until I got married. It has been the hardest and most rewarding thing of my whole life. It wasn’t a part of my plan, but it was better than anything I could’ve ever imagined! 

If you’re like me and you had a plan for your life that maybe isn’t going the way you think it should, don’t give up hope. Maybe your plan wasn’t the same as God’s. Maybe He has something even better in store for you. 

Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.

6 In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths. Proverbs 3:5-6