I met God's Will on a halloween night, he was dressed as a bag of leaves...

Lately, the idea of God's plan has come up a lot... I'm a history fanatic, so the idea of things correlating and working together, and the notion that we can see how events impact other events and how these events impact our lives just fascinates me. I love to look at single instances and see how they've changed the world. I heard a quote in my freshman World History class that was, "A butterfly flaps it's wings in China, and there's an earthquake in California." I love the quote because it reminds me that everything is not only correlated, but connected. You can't take out one peice of history and have history be the same. The outcomes are so different. And that's what makes it fun. You can play hypothetical what-ifs until you're blue in the face, but what happened, happened. And it impacts. And that's that.

I like to observe this kind of thing with my own life. See how all of the little peices tie together. I've had the advantage of having a rough--yet not too rough--life. I've had a lot of heartbreak and a lot of hurt, and there's been a lot that God has pulled me out of. I can say without a doubt that I would be a very, very different person if God had left me to my own devices. Sometimes, it's hard for me to look at my life where I am now and say, "Yeah, God's gonna bring me through this, and I'm going to be better on the other side." Most of the time, though, my mustard-seed faith allows me the joy of being able to trust God. I often find myself saying, "Okay, Karis, you haven't been trusting God with this. How 'bout we start doing that now." And when I do, I find that God has majorly been working in my life, and the parts of my life where I sit and wonder how he's going to break me out of, are the parts of my life he's brought me to in order to show me something even better on the other side.

You see, I do believe God has a plan for each and every one of our lives. I'm not ever going to say I don't believe that... but I don't believe it's a boxed in plan. I don't believe God says, "Okay, on Tuesday Karis will be doing this at 8:32, and then she'll do that, and she'll finish off the day with a grilled cheese sandwich." God's got better things to do than pick what I'm going to have for dinner... Besides, isn't the entire message of the New Testament shown in Jesus? Jesus, the son of God, who above all LOVED people. Whatever you read in the New Testament, the general theme is "Jesus loves you, so he's dying for you. Repent of your ways and accept his love, and love him back." It's all about love. Love. Love. Love. Not forced, not demanding, unconditional, unexplainable love. We don't have to love Jesus. We don't have to choose to follow Him. And we don't have to choose to follow God's will. We have free choice, that miraculous thing that God gives us that makes it even more of a blessing when we choose to do right, and when we choose to follow his will.

Max Lucado once wrote something interesting about God's plan. I'll paraphrase it. He tells the story of a man who went up to heaven and met God. He and God were looking at God's calendar for his life one day, and the man noticed various treasure chests along the days, some opened, some unopened. He asked God about the treasure chests, and God explained that when he followed God's plan, on days when the chest was open, God gave him special gifts and treasures. However, when he followed his own plans (the day the chest was closed), he missed out on the special treasures and gifts God planned for him. Eventually, some of us get so far away from God's plan that we miss all of God's treasures completely, and we end up thinking our own plan, our own treasures, are the greatest of all, and they aren't.

People sometimes reach the end of their lives and say, "Wow, God's plan was totally different than mine." I think it's a scary thing to hear, when you're 18, laying on your bed with your dreams wide open in front of you, desiring things like a great job, a family, a loving husband. And we hear that, and we think well, my desires aren't that bad, God... So if your plan is so different from mine, I'm not sure I want that part of your plan. But we forget for a moment who our God is. We forget for a moment what he stands for. And we forget that those people sitting at the end of their lives may not have been right. They may have been following their own plan, thinking it was God's. They may have been following God's plan and just haven't stopped to see how perfect it was. They may have never taken the opportunity to truly enjoy God, and to truly understand why He is sovereign and why He is good. And that's a pity.

But, back to the original thought. All of our worries and anxieties about the future come out of a serious misconception and a lack of remembrance about who our God is. This God we have decided to serve. We wonder if we'll get what we want and what we feel we need, but we forget that God has it all under control. In Matthew 6, God says, "Look at the birds. They don't plant or harvest or store food in barns, for your heavenly Father feeds them. And aren't you far more valuable to him than they are? Can all of your worries add a single moment to your life?" I love this verse because it paints such a picture of who our God is. The birds do nothing to get food, other than rely on someone to throw bread crumbs. They are always having to count on God to provide, and yet we can't go day to day without worrying or wondering where our next meal is coming from, or how we'll pay our car insurance bill. And we are the more valuable ones! If God takes care of the birds, wouldn't he so much more take care of us? Why do we worry about these things?

We get caught up in wondering if we'll ever get the life we dreamed of. We wonder if we'll get the picket fence and the terrace, the two children (a boy and a girl), the husband who loves us. We wonder all of these things, and we long for them so deeply, and yet, we forget to trust God. To trust that in His time, we'll get more than we asked or imagine. And we doubt him. And, why? Because we're scared. We've forgotten who our God is. We've forgotten that our God is a God of love and compassion. We've forgotten that those very desires that are in our hearts were put in there by God himself. We've forgotten that God "knows our hearts", as David says in Psalm 139. We've forgotten that he promises to give us the "desires of our hearts", (Psalm 37:4) and we forget that he has promised us a plan of good. "For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope. In those days, when you pray, I will listen. I will be found by you, says the Lord." (Jeremiah 29:11-13) Our God has plans for our lives. Good plans. Plans that fulfill the desires he's put in our hearts. We're so quick to let go of that knowledge.

We always hear people talking about how "bad things happen to good people." Well, you know what? Good things happen to bad people. There are no "good people" in this world. We have all sinned. Every single one of us has committed a sin that years ago would have caused us to be damned to hell. How can anyone damned to hell possibly be a "good person"? The truth is that none of us are. We are all broken, wretched souls who rely on the grace of God to make us better than damned. And the truth is, we have an amazing God. A God who can take the worst parts of our lives, bring us through fire, and make us whole again. Make us better than we were before. One of my favorite quotes is, "Suffering is like speaking many languages. It gives you an opportunity to connect with multitudes of people." Through suffering, we're brought to the face of God and forced to fall prostrate in front of Him. When He redeems us, fixes us, puts us back together, we are sent to go speak of his grace and love to other broken souls so that they, too, can fall prostrate at God's feet. Because at the end of the day, it's not about us. It's about Him. It's about furthering His kingdom. And that includes suffering. That includes our desires. Our wishes. Our worries. All of this is used to further God's kingdom. And when it's put like that, why do we care about what happens tomorrow? Why do we worry about the future that is years down the road, the future that may or may not ever come for us? When everything we need is in God's Kingdom, and everything here on earth is about God's Kingdom, why would we ever worry that we won't be adequately equipped to run this race?

Because you see, God's plan is great. God's plan is there for us to follow. God's plan is a means for us to fall deeper and deeper in love with Him. It's not a means to cast a wall between us and He. It's not meant to be a hindrance. It's meant to be utterly and completely freeing. God places our desires in our hearts. He knows them better than anyone else. He knows about the desires we have yet to find in ourselves, which is why we must humble ourselves, praying to God, "Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. Point out anything in me that offends you, and lead me along the path of everlasting life." Isn't that all we really want, anyway? To be complete? To have someone search our souls, know our hearts. To know our anxious thoughts, and to point us on the right track. Don't we just want someone to know us? "Trust in God; lean not on your own understanding. In all of your ways know Him, and He will make straight your paths." (Proverbs 3:5-6) This is all we want. Someone we can lean on. Someone we know. Someone that will make straight our paths.

I look at my life, and I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is a God who loves me and who wants what's best for me, and who has saved me and delivered me from so many ridiculously awful instances, and yet, I still doubt Him and His plan for my life, and I still am angry with Him for not giving me what I want... Even though I know that had He given me anything I wanted earlier, I would be a completely different, completely miserable person. -From my testimony, written out years ago but utterly fitting