Right about now I should be signing my name 1,000 times. Someone should be handing Jason and me a new set of keys. We should be driving out to Crestwood and opening up the door to our new home.
But we're not.
Our dining room. Don't ya wanna come over for dinner? We're serving cereal. You see, that was our plan. That was our plan that worked with our schedule, and fit nicely into our calendar for this week. If our plan worked, we'd be spending the night in our new house, in our new bed, with all of our stuff there tomorrow. But we won't. In fact, tomorrow, the house won't even be ours.
God's plan was different.
Friday, as Jason and I were taping boxes and wrapping everything we own in newspaper, we got a call that we would not get to close on our house Tuesday (today). Instead, we'd have to wait until Thursday.
"What!?
That's only two days I can handle it, no biggie I had everything planned and I just don't know if I can live two days, this is the worst thing ever," I said. I stomped and yelled, and basically acted like I was reliving my terrible twos. After a few minutes (hours), I calmed down enough to see the bigger picture.
You see, God has a way of slowing us down. If you know me at all, you know that I'm super laid back and I like to roll with the punches, except, if you think that, you probably don't know me very well. I'm pretty laid back about where to go to dinner, but when it comes to big life events, I'm like a really controlling control freak meets military officer (or Jillian Michaels). I get really bossy, I want things done in my way, and in my time frame. Our plan was to close today and move in to the house tomorrow. Even though we have our apartment for about 3 more weeks, there's no doubt that I would have required every box under the same roof Wednesday night and I probably would have stayed up all night unpacking to make sure everything was in it's place.
Yeah, I'm ridiculous like that. Pray for my sweet husband.
Fortunately, God is working on this in my heart. He's shaping me and creating me into a much better image barer of Himself but forcing me to slow the heck down. Part of the reason I pitched an ever-lovin' fit on Friday when we got this news was because I knew it wouldn't push our move back just two days...it would push it back a week. Since Jason works in a retail environment, he has to work on the weekends, so that means that his next day off is the following Wednesday. I almost volunteered to handle the whole thing on my own on Friday, but Jason put in end to that before I even finished my sentence.
After a couple of days of letting our new plan settle in, I've come to see how much better God's plan is. Now we will have the time to do things in a more organized manner, and I won't give myself a stroke trying to get everything done. It even works out better for some of the remodeling that we're doing in the master bedroom because now the work will be finished before we actually move all of our furniture and start living there.
I don't know where you are in your walk with Christ, or if you even have a relationship with Christ, but I do know that He cares for you deeply. Jason and I are buying a house, which is a HUGE deal to us, but to God, it's just us using the money He's blessed us with so that He can shelter us in a different zip code. Only, it IS a big deal to Him too. He's protecting us and working out each and every detail for our good, even when it's not in the way or in the time frame that we wanted or expected.
Wherever you are in your life today, cast your burdens, your plans, your timeline on Him...because He truly cares for you. In the battle of my plan vs. His plan, His plan will always be victorious. Praise Him for that today!
"Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you." - 1 Peter 5:6-7
