Steps

I never would have admitted it, but I am definitely a five-year-planner. I LOVE knowing where I am headed, even if my plans don't go as planned, I like to plan and feel like I have some kind of control. I like to say things like, I am doing this right now so that this and this and this can happen and bring me here. Over the last few years God has been teaching me to focus on steps instead of goals. It sounds silly and maybe even wrong. Of course we should focus on goals, right? So that we can take the right steps? But when the goal is in God's hands, not mine, He has taught me that simply taking the steps He lays out before me is a much wiser plan. When I focus on the goal I tend to make up my mind about what the steps should look like. I worry incessantly about taking the wrong steps, about diversions and set backs, and most of all about provisions. Instead of laying my life before Jesus, my prayers are more like, "Hey you! I've got these plans I'm working on and things keep going wrong! Why can't you just change everything and make it work out smoothly for my plans, huh? Do you even really care about me? What about MY PLANS?! My plans.. my plans... my preciousssss..."

Yeah, it get's down right annoying. And creepy.

As I finish the final details of my application for Nursing school, I can't help but feel amazed. Am I finally here? It's been over 3 years since I started pursuing this degree and I am only just applying for the program! Of course, it's not that time has been wasted. Life has been lived, mountains climbed, babies born, hearts changed, moves made. No, time has not been wasted at all, and it's flown by so furiously fast that I sit here almost 4 years later thinking, Am I finally here?

"Here" is really not anywhere but a continuation of this journey I call life. I still don't even know if I'll get in the program or when I'll start it, or what will happen after that. And yet to be sending in my application is a point I have been waiting for... for a very long while. I like to look back to the time when the thought first seriously planted itself in my mind. How full of doubt and fear I was. The things I thought, like how I wouldn't be smart enough, would be a bad mom, wouldn't be able to afford it, or that it just wouldn't work out because I wanted it to. God has used the last few years to transform this goal from a lofty dream, to a calling, to a part of a much bigger picture. So I worry less about whether I'll be good enough as a student, a nurse, a wife, or a mother, and I focus more on the joy God has put in my heart as I learn more about Him and continue to take the steps He has laid out for me.