the today plan
Let's talk about five year plans. They suck. I have always been a big planner (shocker) and have always known what I wanted for my life / the job that I wanted. Until this past year. I had this whole great master plan. I was going to go to Ole Miss, graduate in 4 years, and attend dental hygiene school in Texas (obviously). Oh and meet my husband along the way. And then I went to college. And caught a bad case of an overwhelming eating disorder. And everything changed.
My five year plan went from graduating from Ole Miss in 4 years to not graduating from Ole Miss but instead finishing my degree through whatever hygiene program I attended in Dallas while living with my sister, Anna. I built up this “dream” in my head. This dream where everything was going to be perfect in Dallas. I would no longer struggle in the same ways, I would be closer to finishing school, I would live with Anna (a true dream of ours). This plan lasted a couple of months. After many discussions and planning we were ready and anxious to live together again. Then over Christmas break I whispered the words to Anna… “I kinda think I don’t want to do dental hygiene.” This was the first time that I had admitted this out loud, even to myself. I had continually buried this weird feeling that it wasn’t the right thing. I had always planned for this to be my plan and now I am just switching it up? Changing my mind? This was so NOT ME (identity crisis story to come). This admission led to a full on powwow with my mom and dad (and Anna of course) on our living room floor with the explosion of Christmas surrounding us. We went through every single career option sitting on that floor and none of them sounded right.
From there I decided that to give me more time I was going to just fully get my degree from Ole Miss (something I tried to convince myself I was fine without, in the previous plan). But I would complete it online so I could still live with Anna. perfect plan right?! Sadly no.
Once things continued to get worse with all of the eating disorder and mental health stuff we decided that I should come home for the spring semester and just take some online classes that I knew I needed (at this point still for dental hygiene). We were hoping that over this spring semester and summer that I would make good progress with recovery but that didn’t happen. So when it came time to really move forward with finding an apartment in Dallas my parents had a sit down with me and basically told me they didn’t think it was a good idea for me to leave home again. I agreed with them but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t crushed.
This started a pretty long period of feeling like I had no purpose. I wanted so badly to have something that I was passionate about. It felt as if everyone had their lives planned out and was excited about something they had coming. But here I was just going through the motions and ticking off the days. I was told countless times that there are so many people who don’t have a plan or don't know what they want to do. And that is great…for them. I craved that five year plan. For a minute I thought it was going to be chiropractic (story to come) and then I didn’t necessarily feel confident in that either.
But during this time of wrestling with this uncomfortable, unknown future for quite awhile I leaned heavily on the Lord. I thought that I had already given my life over to him and trusted his plans for my life but then I realized I was just saying that. Trying to convince myself that I was fine, everything is fine. When in reality my mind was on a constant loop of thinking about jobs or graduate schools and what the logistics of that would be. There wasn’t a specific day that I released all of my possible “plans” to the Lord but suddenly I was free of all of the worry and stress about tomorrow (Matthew 6:34). So right now I don’t have a plan. And that is okay! (big deal for me). I am trusting God to provide me with just the right thing at the right time. Everything He does has a reason. Right now He wants me to be still and trust in His plan and timing.
God has a perfect plan for you! His timing is never our timing, But his is always perfect! ❤️
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