As you look back on your life, can you see places in which you were plotting a course, and without your permission, it entirely changed? Looking back now, can you see how that unexpected turn was a gift from God? Do you recognize other moments in which you still can’t understand why it had to happen that way?
It’s one thing to plot your course and an entirely other thing for the Lord to establish your steps. (Proverbs 16:9)
More than two decades ago, while we were busy plotting our course, God was determining our steps—right into an unexpected job interview. Within a week of that divine appointment, my husband was hired, or should I say, we were hired. As is the case with boarding schools, it’s an all-hands-on-deck commitment. We were assigned to live in a boy’s dorm, where my husband would serve as an assistant head, and I took a position working in the Admissions Office. So much for our plans to return to his boarding school a decade later with grad degrees under our belt and our own teens ready to enroll. Instead, we were newlyweds living in a dorm of 40 teenage boys without any children of our own.
Sometimes, things don’t work out as we plan.
I never did get that grad school degree, although Stephen squeezed his in somewhere between juggling dorm duty, teaching Chemistry, and fathering our children. That child we dreamed of seeing enrolled at her daddy’s school came to pass fourteen years later, but alas she never did become an alum, as God rerouted us to a new school her junior year. Yes, things don’t always turn out how you expect. There were twists and turns we never could have planned, and yet I see the hand of God at work in both His provisions and His redemption throughout times in which I felt nothing but confused.
Join me at The Better Mom to discover how to handle your rerouted plans.
Before you go, be sure to check out the Brave Women Manifesto.
