Proverbs 16:9
" 9 We can make our plans, but the Lord determines our steps."
I have experience with this verse, what seems like a lot of experience. A few years ago, I started this journey on learning patience and it seems that some lessons have to repeat themselves...a lot!
While my blogging journey on patience started a few years ago, that actual journey is a life long one. If I look back on my life, I realize that God has to teach me about patience many ways and many times. My husband and I are getting ready to celebrate our 12th wedding anniversary this year, and let me tell you it's been an adventure! When we first got married, the lessons on patience stemmed around getting to really know each other and listen to one another, then it was learning to live with one another (or even myself at times) in new situations. In our first 5 years of marriage we moved to three different states and four different houses. So just about the time I'd start to learn a lesson in patience...a new living situation would present itself and I'd have to start my lesson all over again.
That last move in the first five years was from Michigan to Oklahoma. If you aren't familiar with those two states...they aren't close to one another. My husband and I knew it was time to try and finish our degrees and we knew that we wouldn't be able to do that in Michigan, so we started praying about where God wanted us to go. We decided to pray separate from each other for a period of time and see what God had to say to each of us individually. At the end of this time we got back together and talked about our time with God. As it turned out, we both heard the same thing, it doesn't matter what you chose I will make it work for you. So that started our journey to OKC.
Not only did our journey to a new state start then, but my first obvious lesson in Proverbs 16:9 started too. God clearly told us that we could chose either option, so we chose...and promptly were thrown in to a situation where we had zero money and zero family anywhere near us. We lived VERY tightly for awhile and learned some awesome lessons on money management (that we are trying to live by today). The thing it took me nearly 7 years to realize that I'd learned during that time, is that God determined our steps. WE made the plans, but GOD determined those steps. Things did not turn out the way we thought they were going to. We had to struggle, per God's plan, and learn things the hard way.
Fast forward seven years and it seems we are, once again, having to learn this same lesson the hard way. We prayed about moving to Indiana last year and felt the same answer in our hearts, God has got this and we can either stay or go, it was up to us. We chose family and "home" (for me). So we packed up our lives, yet again, and made our journey home. Once we got here, things felt much the same as they did when we first moved to OKC only here we had the added stress of family. Let me explain. When we got married we moved to a different state and town that neither of us had grown up in and no family lived in. For 11 1/2 years we lived away from any family...far away for 7 years...and had to learn to make it on our own. We learned this, and now we are back in the fold of a very close knit family, so we have to learn how to function within that family again. If you've ever spent time away from a family this close and then came back to it...well let me just say it's not easy!
My husband and I constantly feel like we made the wrong choice in coming home. If we were still in OKC, we'd have better paying jobs (granted I would HAVE a job there and no one has hired me here), friends and security. We play the "what if" game a lot, and it seems we are on the losing end of that game. This game can also make you very bitter. Then there is God, what does He have planned for us? What should our next steps be? I question myself and God a lot lately.
Then I came across this verse in my reading and it struck me. It struck me two ways actually. I'm not sure which of these ways the author intended but I think both can apply. The first way, and the way I normally see this verse, was that the author intended us to see that we can THINK we are making all our own choices but God is going to make sure HIS will is done (not in a bad way...I thought and thought about how to type that, and I can't make it come out right.) For instance, "I'm going to live life for myself...drugs, parties, whatever I want" but God still guides my steps. The second way, and the way that feels like it applies to me today, is that we can make choices, be they good or bad ones, and God still loves us, His will still enfolds us. Free will gives us the option of choice. We get to make choices, but we have to live with those choices. Just as in the time we moved to OKC; no matter what choices we made at that time; God was telling us it was ok. We were going to have to learn the same lessons no matter which one we chose!
I think that I sometimes want to make God into my choice maker. I pray; Lord lead me...when what I really mean is, Lord DO this for me, I don't want to! I say "I want to be in Your will" when what I really mean is "make me a robot in this...that way if it fails I can blame You." These are not popular words I'm sure, but they are true. I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels this way, right? I mean surely other people will "talk out of both sides of their mouths" too?
Now I just have to learn how to MEAN that I want to be in His will and be an active part of that relationship. How to I move from "make the choice for me so I can blame You if it fails" to "ok God, I made this choice and it seems to have failed now please help me to move on"? I honestly have no idea. Every way that I can think to pray this just seems to sound the same in my head. I do NOT want to blame God for this, because blame isn't the right feeling. It should be a feeling of leaning on Him to guide me...not blame Him. I know, for now, that I have to just trust blindly but I also know that having that 20/20 hindsight will make it a lot easier to see my lessons in the long run.
Thank you Jesus for helping me to see that you WILL determine my steps and that it will be for my good and to learn more of the lessons I need to learn.
