Plans for Life
God’s purposes are not for me to understand His plans: His plan is for me to understand Who He is.
When I found out I was pregnant with Littles, pregnant at 22, pregnant just 4 months into marriage, I thought my life was over. My hopes and dreams were dead. My plans for myself were utterly destroyed.
Three and a half years later, there are days when I still struggle not to think that. I've certainly been told that. That I'm wasting my life. Being a stay-at-home mom was not a part of my game plan. I was going to get my masters, graduate with honours, travel the world with the Man, teach and write and gain a name for myself in the intellectual community. I had the skill set to do so.
But, you see, God likes to remember things that I would rather conveniently forget. Things like my potentially life-ending depression, an ongoing struggle that has defined great chunks of my life.
Perhaps that is why He gave me the Little Man, because having someone else to care about and care for, while certainly obliterating my chance of worldly success, gave me a desire to live. He gave me something tangible on the dark days, something demanding that I stand up and fight.
Years down the road, I can see this. See that what I thought was the end of my life was in fact God saving my life.
That's why it makes me wonder, why twins? Why now? In what is arguably the worst possible timing available. Does He see something I don't see? Is He remembering something that I would prefer to forget?
This gives me hope.
Because I know that our God is good, He is sovereign, and He doesn't let even the tiniest detail escape His notice. And it may take me another three and a half years before I understand the why, or another thirty, or I may never know. The point is that I can camp out in fear and anger or rest in hope--it all depends on how I choose to understand what He has planned for me.
Ann Voskamp
When I found out I was pregnant with Littles, pregnant at 22, pregnant just 4 months into marriage, I thought my life was over. My hopes and dreams were dead. My plans for myself were utterly destroyed.Three and a half years later, there are days when I still struggle not to think that. I've certainly been told that. That I'm wasting my life. Being a stay-at-home mom was not a part of my game plan. I was going to get my masters, graduate with honours, travel the world with the Man, teach and write and gain a name for myself in the intellectual community. I had the skill set to do so.
But, you see, God likes to remember things that I would rather conveniently forget. Things like my potentially life-ending depression, an ongoing struggle that has defined great chunks of my life.
Perhaps that is why He gave me the Little Man, because having someone else to care about and care for, while certainly obliterating my chance of worldly success, gave me a desire to live. He gave me something tangible on the dark days, something demanding that I stand up and fight.
Years down the road, I can see this. See that what I thought was the end of my life was in fact God saving my life.
That's why it makes me wonder, why twins? Why now? In what is arguably the worst possible timing available. Does He see something I don't see? Is He remembering something that I would prefer to forget?
This gives me hope.
Because I know that our God is good, He is sovereign, and He doesn't let even the tiniest detail escape His notice. And it may take me another three and a half years before I understand the why, or another thirty, or I may never know. The point is that I can camp out in fear and anger or rest in hope--it all depends on how I choose to understand what He has planned for me.
