The Life I Planned...

I read and I write, I often gather inspiration from music, books and of course life. This evening, for no particular reason, I was reading through a book that I received as a gift as a teenager. "Things Pondered" by Beth Moore, is a beautiful collection of short stories and poems that speak encouraging words to women. Now, I know I have read this book many times before, but this night, one poem reached out to me. As I was reading through it, I felt that pitting feeling rise in my stomach. I have been questioning my life and the unfamiliar path that I have taken, I have found myself in a place I never dreamed I'd be...so what happened to the life I had planned?

I wanted to copy some of the words that captured me below;

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Has someone seen the life I planned

It seems it's been misplaced

I've looked in every corner

It's lost without a trace

I've found one I don't recognize

Things missing that were clear

Promises I'd hoped to keep

And dreams I'd dreamed aren't here

Faces I had planned to see

Hands I planned to hold

Now absent in the pictures

Not the way I told.

Has someone seen the life I planned?

Did it get thrown away?
God took my hand from searching

Then I heard him say

"Child, your ears have never heard

Your eyes have never seen

Eternal plans I have for you

Are more than you could dream.

"You long to walk by sight

But I'm teaching eyes to see.

I know what I am doing

'Til then, you must believe."

He's done so much, I felt ashamed

To know He heard my moans

To think I'd trade in all He's done

For plans made on my own.

I offered Him my future

And released to Him my past
I traded in my dreams

For a plan He said would last.

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I will be the first to say that I have created my own plans, often neglected God's will for my life and continued on a way that I thought was best for me. How thankful I am that even still, he has blessed me. Only God knows my whole story, He lets me write each chapter on my own, asking only that I let Him lead me through. It is His resplendent love and the life He has planned for me that allows me to trust and believe that great things are in store for me, here on earth and in heaven.