This week I would like to reflect upon a conversation I had Sunday evening. I had just left church and was facing the daunting task of surviving Highway 280 traffic when a conversation arose with a friend on each other’s current struggles. Work, relationships, guilt, being judged by (and judging) others, being hurt and so much more were brought up in this intense 30-minute conversation. Yet, the one thing that stuck in my mind was said when we started talking about how we were worried about whether or not certain things were going to work out in our lives. Though I had no solution to this problem, this person told me that we just shouldn’t think about it too much. She validated this reasoning by saying that the more we think about it, the more we get our hopes up and the more we get our hopes up, the more susceptible we are to being hurt.
I quickly proceeded to be the great friend that I am (enter sarcasm), and bluntly tell her that she doesn’t even follow her own advice. However, as I continued to think about what she had said, I began to think that even though the advice might be misguided, it could be a great way to live. I didn’t have the illusion that living my life this way would prevent me from being hurt, as I realize this is an inevitable part of life.
Instead, I thought back to a saying that a friend’s mother used to say, “You plan, God Laughs.” While this is great advice (and just a great saying in general), allowing someone else to design your life plan is difficult. I had a hard enough time trusting my college advisor to get me out of Birmingham-Southern with all of the credits needed to graduate. How do I trust someone that I cannot physically touch to plan my life?
I know that I have, like most others, made plans for my life – to have a successful career, raise a healthy family, to have children, to live in Birmingham, etc. I do not think that there is anything wrong with wanting what I think is best for me. However, what I have come to realize is that we do not always know what is best for ourselves. Our destiny, our purpose in life, and what is best for us were planned before we could think for ourselves – even before our earliest ancestors could think for themselves. Yet we continue to plan.
Is this a bad thing? Are we defying God and fighting his pre-designed plan? I do not think so. It is human nature to think about the possibilities – to have dreams – to have desires. He has wired us the way he did for a reason. Fortunately, yes fortunately, most dreams and desires do not come to fruition. Imagine how unsatisfying it would be to succeed when you never fail or to get something when you already have everything. There would be no satisfaction. You would never experience the jubilation and excitement that runs through your body when you are happy because you wouldn’t know what it is like to hurt.
I want to make it clear that I am not saying that we should stop dreaming or quit striving for our goals. I believe we should do these things, but next time something doesn’t work out, maybe we should see it as a blessing. A blessing that we do not have to carry the burden of always knowing what is best for us, a blessing that we know what rejection feels like, a blessing that there is someone that has already made our plans and a blessing that – even if we fail - we can always rebound to take another step in some direction.
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