I have a confession. I get jealous when I hear people say that. I wish I felt there was an specific plan for my life and that I was right where I needed to be due to the Lords guidance. I gotta say, I just don't feel that.
Maybe God had a really great exciting plan for me and I've somehow missed an important turn. I get that feeling sometimes and I just can't seem to shake it. It's not that I think my life is really terrible, on the contrary it's lovely, it's just... the dreams of my youth have not matched the reality of my middle age.
Not to sound ungrateful but what would be the point of a plan that leaves me as a suburban housewife in some nondescript town wrestling with leaking toilets and belligerent children? If you were to sit down and come up with a plan for your life would that be it? Is that really something that God would come up with? Surely He could come up with something a little more meaningful.
And what about all those starving children in Africa, or that woman born under the Taliban who was executed because she raped. Frankly, if you ask me, those are really crummy plans.
Maybe at the last minute it will all come together. I'll stand back and suddenly see this magnificent tapestry. Or maybe it will be like one of those crazy drawing exercises where you draw something that doesn't look like a thing and then when you're done you turn it upside down and you realize, "Oh my gosh! It's the Mona Lisa!" or something like that. I'll keep you updated.
In a world where there are endless variables and the choices of someone we've never even heard of can have a profound effect upon where we end up -- I have trouble believing that God himself can co-ordinate that. And if he could, why would he? He created a world of endless variables for a reason.
No, I just don't believe that whole "plan just for me". It would be nice to think it's the case....maybe I've just lost faith.
But I do believe we have to keep on trying to do our best every day and endure to the end. We need to nurture our testimony and our relationship with The Lord by praying and reading the scriptures. We need to honor our commitments, teach our children right from and wrong and love our spouses. We need to be kind to others and do what we can to lend a hand to those less fortunate and contribute to our community, even if only in small ways. And we need to hope that somehow we'll find a way to utilize our talents to make our family and society better.
If we can do that then I believe everything is going to be OK. I don't know how, but somehow in this life, or the next everything will work out.
I know God planned to send us a Savior, his son, so we could repent and learn from our mistakes rather than be forever condemned by them. And I know that if we follow this plan we can return to be with him someday. And maybe that is plan enough.
