The Plan

“The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer. My God, my rock, in whom I take refuge; my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.” Psalm 18:2

“Calli, what grade are you in now?”

“I’m a senior.”

“Oh wow! So what do you plan to do after high school?”

“I am going to Hillsdale to run track and study sports management and journalism. I want to write devotion books when I get older.”

Then I proceed to point to where Hillsdale is on my “mitten”, tell what events I run in track and occasionally explain what exactly a devotion book is.

This conversation has been had at least fifty times in the past month. And not until now have I really realized what this means: I will be an adult.

Technically I am already an adult. But in about six months, I will become a real adult. How exciting! And nerve-racking. And confusing. And stressful. I am going to guess that this next year is going to be one of the scariest, happiest, saddest, and craziest times of my life.

I’m no longer going to have the same routine I have had for the past thirteen years. I’m not going to be sleeping in the same house, eating with the same people, doing the same things that I’ve been doing forever. This is all I’ve ever known. And now I’m just supposed to go off and start over, in a competitive, high achieving environment without my mom and dad to talk to every night. And in all seriousness, I don’t know if I’m ready for that. I have never not gotten an A in all of my school years, and right now, I only have one. Out of five classes, I only have an A in one of them. How am I supposed to handle college? I suppose you could say I am experiencing some self doubt right about now.

And if my current circumstances aren’t enough to inflict doubt, I just have to think about my future. I am choosing a career that isn’t really guaranteed. I want to run my own businesses and be a writer. I cannot say I am building my future on the most stable of career choices.

But my future doesn’t depend on the stability of my career, it depends on the stability of my God.

I just have trust God. That is such a confusing statement because it implies simplicity, which is sort of true, yet it brings tremendous trial and difficulty at times. God is a confusing fella. Yet I trust Him.

I trust Him because I know Him. And I know Him through all of the church services, Bible studies, conversations, readings, songs and videos I have experienced. I have eighteen years of knowledge stored up, and if that knowledge tells me anything, it’s that God loves me, and He never fails. That’s a good enough reason for me to trust Him.

Because of this trust, I am going to do what I know He wants me to do with my life. I used to think there would be some defining moment where God would just shine down His plan for me and I would set out in obedience, but that’s not really how this is working out. Writing has just been this thing I do because I enjoy it and it has become an important part of my life. And God, being an even more important part of my life, can be glorified through my writing, so I figure this works out pretty good: I get to do what I like and God gets the glory. And as long as God is glorified, I’m all set.