*I wrote this a little less than a year ago. I finally got my chance to graduate school, but as I have been continuing to figure out God’s plan for my life and making difficult decisions, I find I need to be constantly reminded of this truth.  I have also found that God often answers our questions by changing our questions.  Now, instead of looking to the standards of the world to tell me who I am, I want to ask, who does God say that I am?  And instead of asking God for a plan for my life, I want to ask how He will make my life for His plan. 

My life is somewhat of a puzzle to myself.  Two years ago, I had such a clear vision of who I was, where I was going, and what God wanted me to do.  I was a thinker, a writer, to go to graduate school to think and write to the glory of God.  Today, my life looks nothing like I thought it would.  It is a testimony to the truth that, “In his heart, a man plans His course, but the LORD determines his steps.” -Proverbs 16:9

I don’t regret my choices at all or dislike the life I have.  It is more that I am surprised and somewhat perplexed by the many turns my life has taken.  I wonder if I was simply wrong about who I was and what I was to do….and if not, how does that vision of my life fit with what and where I am now?

I think I have somehow come to believe that if I don’t ever go to graduate school, I will have missed my purpose, wasted my gifts, and failed to live up to my potential.   This surely cannot be the truth, for God is sovereign and nothing can thwart His purposes.  “The plans of the LORD stand firm forever, the purposes of His heart through all generations.” -Psalm 33:11  “The LORD will fulfill His purpose for me–your love, O LORD, endures forever–do not abandon the work of Your hands.” -Psalm 138:8  I rest in the truth that God is sovereign and there is nothing I could do to mess up His plans for me.

Moreover, I think I have deceived myself into a very narrow understanding of my purpose.  I have come to define myself in terms of education, performance, and achievement. Out of this muddled confusion, the question rises in my heart, “God, who do You want me to be?”  To which, He simply replies, “Be mine.”

I find peace in this reply and I hope you do too. When we feel confused by life, anxious for the future and what we will be, “this is what the LORD says–He who created you o Jacob, he who formed you O Israel: ‘Fear not for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine.” -Isaiah 43:1 God has not saved me so I could go to grad school.  God has not saved you to____.  Fill in the blank.  Christ did not die to make me a writer; He died to make me His.  That is what I am to be first and foremost.  He chose me, purchased me, saved me to make me His very own.  What follows is that the way in which I can most glorify God, and so fulfill my purpose , is to belong wholly and completely to Him, irrevocably bound to Him by the grace of His blood and boasting in none else.  I will look to Him to satisfy my desires.  I will look to Him to tell me who I am.  I am His.

Content in that, I will then be able to walk into whatever additional role God gives me–wife, nanny, student, writer–bringing glory to Him.  But the wondrous truth, the truth that brings real peace, joy, and rest, is that if I was never anything else, it would be so much more than enough–just to be His.