As a teenager I had big and exciting plans ahead for my future. I knew what college I wanted to attend, I knew the field I wanted to work in, and I finalized the kind of wedding dress I wanted even though I wasn’t dating anyone.
But life doesn’t always go by our rules, in fact, most of the time life goes off the rails and gives us a whole new deck of cards and we have to plan ahead for the life we are given, which usually isn’t the life we have dreamed of.
We can’t expect the unexpected or plan our lives because illness happens, relationships break, families move, jobs get terminated, schools close, and the world is endlessly changing.
When it was time for me to start thinking about college, the school I had dreamt of going to was re-shifting their focuses and what used to have incredible liberal arts and nursing programs had cut these things out almost entirely.
A year later I was diagnosed with a life changing illness that permitted me from going away to college. Living with a debilitating disease like Myotonic Dystrophy was definitely not even something I thought of happening to me. I would pray for those with sickness and now I was someone living with sickness. How does something like that happen, especially to ourselves?
In Jeremiah 29:11, we read, “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “Plans to prosper you and not harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” How could something so awful, full of intense persecution to thyself, and mental health destroying be a part of God’s plan for my life?
I believe God uses unfair and excruciating things in our life to help others and to amplify the glory of His kingdom. In which ways? I’m not completely sure. Does that make it not so painful? No. Am I reminded of this all the time? Again, the answer is no.
HOWEVER, if this is something God has put in our lives then there is a profound reason. Nothing happens in the perfect divine will of God that is not setting other things in motion. That doesn’t mean what God has in store for us with these horrible life experiences are perfect, but HE will make them perfect.
After getting my diagnosis, so many things changed. I couldn’t go to school, I couldn’t work, marriage was not what God has or had in store for me. But, there are things that I’ve found and learned through this part of my life that I would have not known if it weren’t for the future that I didn’t plan for.