Will. Blessings. Patience.

I recall a quote I was told towards the end of Mission Year. An alum said he was sitting with one of his seminary professors. The students were talking about figuring out where their lives were going and discerning God's plan for their lives. The professor replied quite hastily and sternly: "God doesn't have a plan for your life. God wants His children to make good decisions."

This has stuck with me. In my upbringing, especially during my college years, there was so much pressure to find God's will for your life. Finding God's one plan for you (specifically who you were going to marry and when) was the top concern. I don't believe that. It may be purely selfish, but I like the idea of God wanting us to make good decisions rather than discerning the one plan He has for us. There's far more freedom to experience God's Love, and far less pressure.

The whole thing has left me with an overwhelming tendency to worry about everything. I can barely buy jeans (seriously, I stood at the rack at Target last staring for like 5 minutes). Translate that into something actually important, such as my relationship with my Beloved, Lindsey. Oh dear, I'm unable to enjoy the blessing that she is because I'm always looking for the indicator that God's "one plan" is for me to not be with her.
- A by-product of the whole God's will thing is that most people around me doubted what I felt God was leading me to, leaving a pretty big issue with self-doubt. -
I assume because I love Lindsey and because I personally benefit from knowing and loving her, it's wrong for me to be with her. It's some sick idea of "God doesn't want us to have things that we think are good. Only He is good, and He constantly reshapes our definition of good by giving us "good" by our definition, and taking it away to realize that there's only one way to see Him." I use the analogy of God being some kind of bully big brother who, in order to teach us how to walk down the stairs, trips us and pushes us down them. And then He shakes His head and calls us stupid for falling. God doesn't work like that. All that theology leaves out the FACT that during Mission Year, when I was getting to know and falling in love with Lindsey, the more focused I was on God, the more I loved Lindsey. Last night I wrote "loving Jesus means loving Lindsey." To love Lindsey is to pursue Jesus. That's how it works. Duh Jordan.

When it's put in perspective, I seriously doubt that God would place Lindsey in my life, bring us so close together, have me sweat it out during Mission Year and finally get to tell her how I felt at the end of the year, just to break us apart. God is good. He is not in support of torture.

Every day's a battle to enjoy the gifts that God has given me. Weird, isn't it? While most people seem to overindulge in God's blessings, I can't even appreciate them.

Lord, have patience with me.