I Love God's Personalized Plans

Let me tell you about a funny conversation I had the other day when I went to the bank. Now, when I say it was “funny,” I mean that in a slightly sarcastic way. I walked in to see the teller, and the familiar woman behind the counter smiled and inquired how many more times she would be seeing me before I left for discipleship school in California. We talked for only a moment when she asked me, “So what do you want to be when you grow up?”

I laughed at both the irony of thinking I hadn't yet grown up, and how often an answer to this question is required of me. “I'm not quite sure,” I said jokingly. “If I ever find out, I’ll let you know.”

You know, this question used to bug me a lot. In fact, I've even written a blog post about it before. It irritated me mostly because I didn't have an answer to it, and I felt like God was withholding my “calling” or his plans from me. Friends within my Christian circles, to no fault of their own, were quick to pull out the perpetually quoted Jeremiah 29:11 verse and add insult to injury.

“For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “Plans to prosper you and not to harm you. Plans to give you a hope and a future.”

“Don’t worry,” they’d say. “God has a plan for your life.”

I didn't see it, but that’s all water under the bridge now as I've moved past the fact that God clearly isn't going to offer me a detailed map of my future. His plans, whatever they may be, weren't made apparent when I was a kid. I couldn't spend my young adulthood planning for the future career I felt called to like everyone else. It was frustrating, but I wrote about it and got over it.

Now, however, I have a few more words for those who incessantly feel the need to bombard me with questions about my future.

No offense if you’re one of them.

You ready for this? Here it comes.

Don’t ask me what I want to be when I grow up as if I’m not already something. I’m already grown up, and I’m already what I want to be- myself.

I’m a person who loves my job as a waitress because I enjoy people. I’m one whose stomach turns at the thought of punching in at nine to sit in a cubicle all day and punch out at five.  I’m a person who loves to travel and the constant change and adventure it brings. I'm one who loves Jesus, and doesn't quite know yet how, with my passions, I can "work for Him."

Ultimately, I’m just me, and that’s what I want to be when I grow up.

I may not be able to fit all of that into a fancy career title, but a title wouldn't make me happy anyway. I don’t get paid the big bucks for being me, nor can I get a degree for specializing in being Mary Bocks that will guarantee me a good job, but that’s not really on the top of my priority list.

That would be pretty cool though, huh?

I think some of us can feel cheated because the future of others seems to come so easily. We look at those who knew exactly what career path they wanted to pursue before they could even spell it, and we feel swindled, ripped-off, gypped. Maybe you don’t, but I do- I did, anyway.  Why couldn't it come so easily to me, too? Why couldn't I have been happy being the architect or journalist or screenwriter I wanted to be in middle school?

You want to know why? Because that’s simply not me, and that’s ok.

The truth is, I haven’t been cheated out of a future. God didn't decide to plan everyone else’s future but mine so I could just wander for the rest of my life.  No, as I learn more about how God plans and what that actually means for my life, I realize that God has given me freedom by planning around my personality.

What do I mean? I mean that I’m fickle. I am an erratic human being who thrives on change. So what did God do with that? He gave me options.

Maybe God didn't plan for my future to be constrained by a single career choice because he knows I wouldn't do well that way. Maybe he knew I’d feel trapped. Maybe, as Jeremiah 29:11 says, he has plans to prosper me and give me a future, but maybe that doesn't mean he has planned out my every move. Maybe that means he has provided options that will allow me to grow, glorify him, and enjoy living, but he has given me the freedom to choose my own.

Maybe my future doesn't consist of a single moment wherein I finally discover “what I’m going to be.” Maybe instead it’s a continuous process of just being myself as I follow God's guidance, whatever that might mean for that moment.

Four years ago, that was being a studying public relations. Today, that’s being a woman chasing after the Lord at discipleship school. Maybe someday it’ll be a missionary, or maybe it’ll be writer. Maybe it’ll even be an architect (though that option is highly improbable). Wherever God leads me in the future, I know two things for certain:

Wherever He takes me, it'll be what my heart has been desiring and prepared for in that season, and that chances are high my "destinations" will constantly be somewhere different because God knows there is a restlessness for change inside of me. Like I said, I’m a bit fickle, but maybe even that will change.