I met up with a friend that I hadn't seen in probably 2 0r 3 years on Friday for a beer and a catch up. I knew he'd had a crazy year -- maybe as crazy as mine -- and I thought it would be great to commiserate a bit. I quickly remembered why I had always loved our conversations...we always seem to get into discussions about God and His will...this time, we debated whether free will actually interrupts God's ideal plan, or whether the choices that we and others make are really just part of His Plan all along. I still haven't resolved where that netted out, but as I was driving home that night, I knew God was speaking to me with a wake-up call about "His Plan" for my life...
I have been praying a lot lately for the next chapter of God's plan for my life to get started. See, I'm expectant. (no, not that kind of expectant)...I'm expecting that God has an amazing plan for me. He's confirmed it and reassured me and shown me pictures and signs. And, each day, I wake up believing that His Plan will be revealed when He's good and ready to show me. And, I had shared with my friend that he should have hope and belief that God has a Plan for him too -- that after such a crappy year of loss and humility, that I just knew that God's Plan for him must be so awesome...
But, even as I said it Friday night, something felt "off" about it. And, as I drove home and prayed about it this weekend, I realized that what was "off" was my insistence that the Plan hadn't started yet. That I hadn't been walking every single day in His Plan -- and that the past 2 years or so weren't part of it. That I had insisted that if my friend would just trust, that God's great Plan for him would eventually be revealed...
The truth about His Plan, for me, is that these past few years of tear-down and erosion of everything that gave me security and identity was a chapter. And, more recently, this re-birth and re-definition and newfound understanding of trust is a chapter.
Last spring, I recall feeling a sense of being re-born into a new chapter -- not exactly that the story of my life up to that point wasn't part of the "book," but that there was a turning point in the book...this year, as the trees are blooming and the daffodils are coming up (early, I might add!), it feels like that all over again...another new chapter.
I am being made new. I am becoming. If a friend described me today, it would be a very very different description than two years ago.
My friend said, on Friday, "you're different...I can tell...more vulnerable. More 'you'."
I am different -- I'm not just on my way to being different...I am a better, wiser, more beautiful, joyful, surrendered, forgiving, trusting woman, friend, daughter and mother than I was a year ago...(oh yea, I'm also a runner...I couldn't have said that a year ago!)
So, I'm not waiting on His Plan anymore...I'm living in it. And, so so blessed to have so many amazing friends to be part of the story.
