So, I'm not exactly in the best of moods. I've been strangely depressed the last few days and I'm trying to work my way out of it. I think its just because a lot of things in my life have changed in the last 3 or 4 days and its been hard for me to adjust. So bare with me while I try to make sense of things.
The last while I've been dealing with some internal struggles. And by while I mean the last couple of years. I've reached a point in my life where things can change in a blink of an eye and where the tiniest decision that I make, could completely change my whole path. Its been amazing to me how much I have grown as I've come to realize that, but also how stuck I've become. Change is scary. I think that no matter what people say, no one actually likes change. Even those people who just let life happen, if something in that world changed for them, and made it so they had to start making active choices, they wouldn't like it. For me, I've tried very hard to take an active role in my life. To make sure that I have everything figured out and planned for. When I started college, I started to realize that my plans aren't always what really need to happen. But rather than learn from that realization, I continued to plan for everything that could happen. I would spend way too much time coming up with plans. Plans for every decision that I could make about some situation. I'd make lists and diagrams and goals and I'd do research and basically work myself into a panic and lose it. I thought about everything all the time. And even when I told myself I wasn't thinking, that I was just daydreaming, I was daydreaming about different paths I could take. Yes, normally they were completely ridiculous and unrealistic plans, like moving to London and becoming a fashion designer... But they were dreams nonetheless. And ultimately, they were plans. But they were the worst kind of plans. The kind where I envisioned an absolutely perfect life where I had complete control of everything and everything worked out just the way that it "should". And its amazing to realize how unhappy all that daydreaming has made me.
Its ironic because as I've made these realizations, I have felt like I've gained so much self-confidence and insight into myself. But really? I haven't. I'm not going to say that I haven't gained anything from it, because I have. For sure. But in some ways I was just telling myself what I wanted to hear. And when things didn't work out the way I had convinced myself that they would, I got really down on myself and everything was all the sudden my fault and there was some sort of deficiency that I had to make up for. All the sudden I was too shy. Too avoidant. Too out of touch. Too busy. Too analytic. Too... Whatever. But all the stuff that I've changed over the last few days have made me realize some things that I have actually known all along, but wont let myself be okay with. One: God is going to make us do things that we don't like. And more than likely you wont realize that you won't like them until you're already doing them and there is no way you can stop doing them. Two: God made me who I am for a reason. He gave me my personality, my weaknesses, my insecurities and my strengths for a reason. Whether or not I like those things, doesn't mean I get to change them, or that no matter how much I pray to get help in my sad attempts to change them, its not going to happen the way that I want it to. I have these major insecurities about things that make me WHO I AM and I need to learn to accept them. Now, I'm not saying that these things give me any free passes or excuses to not do things, because they don't. But I also have these things for a reason. And I have some really awesome strengths that also make me who I am, and some how, they all work together. I may not know how now, and I may not ever know how they work together, or how they will work in my benefit, I have ideas... But that doesn't mean that it is what is really going on, or that it is the whole picture.
I wish I didn't have to have these moments of insight every 6 months. And I wish that when I did have them, that they would stick with me longer than they do, or that it meant that some overwhelming and lasting change was taking place. But it doesn't. And though I know these things, I'm still going to struggle with letting go and doing what God has planned for me, rather than what I have planned for me. I'm probably going to continue making plans, and continue being frustrated when they don't work out. But one thing that I know I will change, is that instead of praying constantly to change things that I think I need to change, I will ask instead to know the things that God wants me to change, and ask for help with those things. I will also ask God to help me use the things that he has already given me, even the things that I don't like, to the best they can be used.
So this is what I mean by my title. Life Happens. It does. No force can change that. No plan can affect it. All we can do is go with it. Make what plans we need to make God's plans happen, and less painful. But even then, we don't really have control of it. We just have to remember that God does have a plan. And it is a perfect plan. And He loves us and would never make us do something that wasn't a manifestation of that love. So if you get nothing from this attempt to make myself feel better, at least know that God loves you. And I know that because God loves me. And I'm just as worthy of that love as the next person.
