“What do you want to be when you grow up?” “What are your plans for the future?”
We all start making plans for what we want to be and what our future might be like when we get into our teens and start to think about college, marriage, or family.
What if we were asked these questions: “What do you think God wants you to be when you grow up?”, “What do you think God has planned for your future?” Would the answers be different?
I don’t mean to say that we should not make plans or have dreams on what we want to be. I do mean to say that maybe we should consider that what our plan is and what God’s plan is may be totally different. I can only speak for myself, but when I have pushed to make my dream come true, and it’s not in God’s master plan for me, things never turn out like I thought they would. I’m then disappointed and continue to look for how I can make my dream come true.
It wasn’t my plan to be a part of corporate America – my plan was to get married and to have a lot of children.
It wasn’t my plan to move away from my beautiful hometown, to have my address change 6 times in 5 years only to end up moving to Florida twice in 3 years! My plan was to stay in Buffalo with the rest of my family.
My plan was not to have to take care of my dying mother, but it was God’s plan. It was in his plan from the day my parents decided to move to Florida to be close to me. Although I did take care of my mother in her last months, I did not accept that it was God’s plan and while I was in the phase of resistance, I lost sleep, I was angry, I started losing faith. Once I accepted it, things fell into place. Work stress was taken away, since at the time I was blessed with a boss who was extraordinarily compassionate. My way of praying changed – it is when I started to say the Rosary twice a day. I embraced the burden that was to become a great blessing.
I am blessed to still have my father with me, and every day, no matter what, is a blessing. Yes, he is old and does forget a lot, but he remembers a lot too. And I know this is part of God’s plan to teach me or to show me something that I may otherwise have not known!
I still make plans, I still have dreams (yes, old people do have them!). What’s different now is I listen – I listen to that little voice that I now know as the Holy Spirit – and am learning when it is saying ‘Go! Go do this!’, or ‘Are you really going to do that?’.
Do you know what God’s plan for you is?
Finding my Voice 