Today I sat swiping through photos of my wedding and thinking about how a year ago I thought my life would look very different today.
Back in March of 2020 I was planning my wedding, working as a magazine designer, and writing the novel I was sure agents would want. If someone had told me I would be living 2 hours away from the place I called home and about to have my first baby, I would have laughed.
It was supposed to be the year of all my dreams coming true. My plans to become an author finally started to come together, working in a field I loved, and getting married to a man I absolutely loved—and still do, for the record.
I think it is safe to say the only plan that stuck this past year was marrying Wesley. Meanwhile, we moved, my job became more difficult, and on July 1st I discovered I was pregnant.
Between throwing up and trying to do my job, finishing my novel fell to the side. By August, I quit my job and found myself reflecting about the last few months on my bathroom floor only sitting up to vomit.
One day Wesley came home and asked if I’d done any praying recently. I said I’d had plenty to say to God and spent much of my time telling him.
I had plans, I had dreams, and there I was feeling like the man who had built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it. This was not the plan I had for 2020.
Yet, the Lord only responded by asking me a simple question.
Why have you replaced me with your plans?
And all I could think was: I don’t know.
Matthew 6:21 says, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will also be.”
My treasure was my plans.
How could my plans be so flawed? How could something so simple be tearing me away from my walk with Christ? Maybe I had decided what my life should look like rather than letting the Lord guide my steps.
The shame crept through me as I recognized the pride inside myself. It was time to accept the life God was calling me too.
The call to live in a new town.
The call to motherhood.
The call to be content in the unknown.
I always thought to let go of my plans would be to let go of my security. However, in this last year, I’ve come to experience the opposite. There is no such thing as security when it comes to earthly security.
My treasure can’t be found in my job, being a wife, being a mother, in politics, or what my plans are for the future. My treasure must be found in Christ.
It is my prayer that God would take my prideful heart and help me to build my house on rock. My plans will fall, the pandemics will come, and snowstorms will blow and beat on my home, but it will not fall, because it has been founded on the rock.
And so, here is to 2021. A year where even in the unknown, God is still and always will be sovereign.
Matthew 7:24-27 “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.”
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