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If by any chance you don’t believe in God, I would like you to keep your mind open for the little time it takes you to read this post. Of course, my intentions are not to change your beliefs. Actually, I truly respect them. The main intention behind this post is to show you my perspective on the beautiful subject of faith.
I’m convinced that the words I write don’t belong to me once they are read by someone else, which means I see my writing as an expression that only you can interpret from your own perspective. In my opinion, that’s the most beautiful exchange in the world. I write from my soul, and you receive it in yours. I shape it in my own way, but the beauty of any kind of art is that you take only what serves you from what you see. Do you need a simple example? Look up how many ways the Bible has been interpreted. I read once that the number is as high as 30,000. What? See, that’s the beauty of writing as an expression. I do it for me, and you take it for you. For this reason, we should try to be selfless when we write.
Now that I’ve clarified my intentions, let me explain how I arrived at this post topic. The past few weeks, life has shown me in a very interesting way that we don’t have control over any situation. I thought I had my life planned, but it turned out that my plans were far from reality. Today is not the best day to share the details, but I promise I will. All I can share for now is that I’m living a beautiful dream, and I’m not sure how I got here because I didn’t plan it at all. My current situation only makes me think that God works in wonderful, mysterious ways.
The funny thing about the paradox of planning our lives is that it doesn’t matter what happens to us, we always go back to that habit. Well, at least that’s true in my case. I remember telling myself right after my divorce that I wouldn’t make plans for my life ever again. Yes, I said never, ever again. Then, I found myself shortly thereafter planning my life as a single mom when I was doing my solo IUI treatment. When that plan failed, I said, “That’s it. I’m not planning anymore.” But I fell back into my old habits, and I’ve been planning everything since then. The paradox of planning your life is that when you hold tightest to your plan, everything changes, and your plan completely morphs and becomes something else. Sometimes, you might immediately feel happy about the change, but other times it might take longer to understand that it was for the best.
This is the reason my post title is “God’s Plan.” I simply don’t have any better explanation for this planning paradox other than God sent us on this beautiful journey called life with a purpose, and He always makes sure to guide us to that purpose. I feel He gives us free will so we can try to get to our purpose in our own way, but when we get kind of lost, He steps in and shows us His plan. Again, it may feel like a shock at first when you have a beautiful plan in mind and you’re certain about how your life will unfold, but then it doesn’t happen. It may feel overwhelming, uncomfortable, and very painful. It may not make any sense to you at first, but at some point, the pieces will fall together, and you’ll be able to see the bigger picture and finally understand it was perfect.
Now, does this realization mean you should stop planning and simply let God guide you? Well, that would be beautiful, but the reality is that you’ll always have your own ideas about how you want your life to look. That’s your free will, and nothing is wrong with trying to plan your future. Actually, it’s great to have the capacity to see what you want and work toward it. That vision will keep you passionate and excited. It will help you grow in many ways because you’ll try different things to reach your goals. To keep planning your future is to feel alive. It’s a wonderful feeling to think about your future self and what you would like to accomplish.
So, what do you do with God’s plan? It sounds kind of complicated to keep planning on your own but trust God’s plan at the same time. However, it’s not complicated if you let it be. I mean, you can keep having your own vision and plans, but understanding that God will direct you if by any chance your plan isn’t getting you closer to your purpose is a total relief. It’s like when you were a little baby trying new things. Your parents let you do it, but you could always be confident that your parents had your back.
Let God have your back, my friends. Keep making your plans, but understand that when something isn’t going in the direction you planned, it’s simply because God has a greater plan for you. If you don’t believe in God, rest assured that there is always a better plan if yours has failed.
Love,
Irene
