Flying Blind

For the first time in my life, I have no plans for the year ahead. I'm flying blind in 2011. Every year before this there were very specific things that were going to happen. Usually, if not always, it revolved around school. Last year I set my sights on my college graduation. Not knowing what came after that had me panicky. I needed to know something, anything that was going to come after that. So I created some plans in my head. They were floating in space a bit, without any real timeline, just that I could tread water over the following year or two till the time came for these plans to come into action. As my year continued and I got closer to graduation, these plans became more real to me. They became my future, my hope for what was ahead. In response to the panic I felt over not knowing what would immediately follow graduation, I began to cling more and more tightly to my dreams. Of course, this was their undoing. After graduation, when those dreams were all I had left, they were ripped out of my hands. My need to have plans became the reason I had none. I was left with nothing in my future, and no way to cope with that.

Over the next several months, I learned what it was like to hope in the Lord. I don't know that I could explain it to anyone if they asked me how I figured it out. It came through desperate prayer when I was pushed to my knees, and a helplessness like I've never experienced. It certainly didn't come out of myself, because I had no strength left to find it.

Tomorrow one of my best friends from high school gets married. As I was standing at the rehearsal this evening, I realized this was the last "time marker" for the future, so to speak. The last thing I really had to count down to is this wedding. From now on, my future is blank. I have no plans for 2011. I don't know when the next big event in my life will happen, and I don't know what that big event will be. A year ago, this would have paralyzed me in fear. I don't know that I would have been able to function. But today this thought got me really excited. God knows exactly what is ahead, in both the big events and the minor details. I'm looking at it from the perspective that I get to discover what is ahead, because as I've learned, I don't have control over it anyway. The creator of the universe has planned my future, and what could be better than that?!