Perfect Plans

My husband and I are sharing our first Christmas together as a married couple.  It hasn’t been easy to decide where to spend Christmas, to decide which family to see when, and for how long.  We were going to flip flop-see one on Thanksgiving and one the weekend after.  And then on Christmas do the opposite.  See the one on Christmas that we had only spent a weekend with before and a weekend with the other.  But plans change and get interrupted.  Matt had to work the weekend we were going to spend with his family for thanksgiving.  I tried to plan it all-make it perfect, but it didn’t work that way.  I felt sorry for Matt and sorry that I couldn’t plan it perfectly.

I try to do that with life.  I try to plan it all.  It’s been hard to do that while I was in college, because so much can change in a day.  I have about the next three years of our lives planned out-that is I would if it worked that way.  There will be curve balls thrown at us.  There will be unexpected things that happen.  God likes to do that to me; he shows me that I don’t have this life under control-he does.  I can’t rely on my own strength because I must rely on his.  This has been an extremely hard lesson to learn, and I’m still learning it.  I know it in my head, which is why I’m able to put it down on paper, but knowing it in my heart is a completely different story.

Earlier this year, a very dear friend moved away.  She was the writer and director of the Easter production at our church.  Who knew that when she left, I would be put in charge?  God did.  God knew that I would be writing this and directing it while going through nursing school in my first year of marriage.  I’ve been extremely busy and yet I still feel like I’ve failed when my school books are strewn all over the living room, or the dishes have piled up over the entire counter, or the laundry hasn’t been done in about three weeks and we’re out of socks.  I want to be the “perfect” wife-the one that is written about in Proverbs 31.  I feel like I was made to be a wife and a mother, so why can’t I do it all the way I’m supposed to?  God is showing me that I have much still to learn.  I thought I was ready to be wife years ago and now that I am one, I know I was wrong then.  I’m ready now, but God had it all planned it out and it worked in his timing.

The rest of my life will work out the same.  When I feel like I am ready for something, but God hasn’t yet granted me with it, maybe I still have growing to do.  Maybe I still have a lot to learn.  My life might not work out the way I’ve planned, but I know it will work out the way God has planned.  He wants the best for me, he wants to grow me, and he will bless me beyond my imagination if I can wait for his perfect plan and his perfect timing.

"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and  not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."