Planning for what? (Day 1)

I am one with my planner. My planner is the oxygen to my lungs, the blood to my heart, the electricity to my brain. Honestly, I'm so OCD when it comes to planning that when I found a planner that scheduled everyday of the week into fifteen minutes increments I let out a little shriek. I would get to Wednesday of the current week and start filling out my schedule for the next. Heck, my entire semester is pretty much planned. I know when every test is, every due date for a project, every tiny reading assignment. I've planned things out like I was God. And like I knew the exact hours I would be able to complete a homework assignment and the exact amount of time it would take. Now, my planner has saved me in times where I almost forgot a meeting, interview, even test. But I've come to realize my extreme planning wasn't because I was afraid of forgetting something, it was my fear of the unknown. I cringe at the fact that I don't know what will happen to me starting in the next few months. Anxiety builds and God falls to the back of my mind. If I can't plan every second of my day I feel like I'm lost. And don't even get me started with how I feel when plans change.

Recently plans changed. Big plans. Very important plans. What do I do now? Where do I go from this? How do I recover? My life has been a huge mind map. I start at my current situation and keep building until I'm put in the ground. Ok, maybe not THAT far ahead, but I had the next ten years figured out. What does all of this mean? It means I don't trust God, and until this huge change of plans happened I didn't realize that.

I was living a real life fairytale. I'm not going to elaborate because this blog isn't meant to be an outlet for my emotions but just trust me when I say that the life I had dreamed since I was little was in my grasp. I couldn't believe it. Everything I wanted was right there and everybody saw the affects it had on me. I was constantly on cloud nine. There was this glow that surrounded me, a joy I couldn't describe to you. Then, without warning, plans changed. I fell from that cloud and hit earth hard. Why would God take so much happiness away? Didn't he see the joy coming from me? Why would a God of love take away? Those questions burned in my soul. I screamed, cried, fought with God. I should be renamed Israel because I wrestled with God and didn't give in. One day I hit a sentence in One Thousand Gifts. I blew it off. Then another in Jesus Calling. I thought for a few seconds and blew it off. The next day when reading Jesus Calling it was there again, and the next, and the next. I blew all of them off. Finally, God slapped me in the face with a sermon. My eyes opened a bit and it hit me. How does a human think they can plan life? We only know such a small piece. He knows everything.

The older I've become the more I've realized I'm a "spiritual crier." I used to hate women like that. I didn't understand why they were so emotional. Well, I'm eating my words now because I cry every time God talks. And with this one I cried a lot. I didn't trust in Him. I didn't trust that He, all powerful Father, would protect me. I didn't trust that He had a plan. He had everyone else's stories written but I was on my own. Ha. What an idiot. And was I an idiot because God said, "Hey, I know how she'll realize she needs to trust Me. I'll take away what's most important to her. I'll plant a worry in her brain and she'll screw up and things won't go her way and then she'll have to listen." Just like in Jeremiah when God wanted something done, it happened. And excuse my crude, uneducated vocabulary, but it sucks. He's never sent me through something like this before. The tests He's given me have never been this hard. But every day without fail, He's been there. So far, it's mostly in scripture. I'm learning what trust is. I'm learning that planning isn't actually that much fun. It's been the main cause of stress in my life and since my plans aren't always His there will be many days where I'm going to be stressed. But that's only if I take the time to plan. Instead, I'm focusing on God. I'm learning to keep my eyes on Him throughout my entire day. Not just in the morning when I read my devotional, not just in chapel, not just in Bible class, and not just in my prayers at night, but every second of every day. Do I still like that he messed up my plans? No. Do I still want them back to the way they were? Yes. But, reluctantly (sometimes), I'm learning to obey, to submit, and to give Him my life. I don't want to fight with Him. He's my Father and He loves me and I Him. I don't want to grow apart from Him because of this. I want this to make us stronger. He knows what he has planned for me and those plans are going to fill me with eternal happiness. Right now might be rough but I will keep trusting and keep walking with my Father until He brings me to the top of this mountain.

I don't really want to admit it, but this is blessing number one. This is the blessing that started everything. It's taken two weeks to finally consider this a blessing and tomorrow I might change my mind, but for this moment the events that happened recently are blessings that have brought me closer to Him.

One more thing. You should really read Jesus Calling. It's so easy to do and the God spoken words have healed me more than I would of ever imagined.