In August of 2003, I packed my bags and moved to Mars Hill, North Carolina as a freshman at Mars Hill College.  If you’ve never heard of Mars Hill, don’t fret– most people haven’t.  Just think: Asheville.  I have determined that you do not find Mars Hill; Mars Hill finds you.  Graduating from MHC as a Youth Ministry major had been the plan all along.  The path to graduation had a few bumps and turns in the road along the way, but I stayed steady the course and finished.  I mean, come on, that was the plan!

In December of 2007, I packed everything up and moved back to Rocky Mount.  Some of you who either grew up here or now live here are probably floored by that decision.  Who moves back here?!?  Yeah, I was wondering that too.  I could have easily stayed.  If I had not been so broken and exhausted by the time I walked across the stage to shake the President’s hand to receive my diploma, staying may have been more appealing.  But I was so it wasn’t.  Instead, I crawled in the car with my family and close family friends who had come to see that infamous walk and help me move everything back east.  I wasn’t sure what would be next.  I mean, there wasn’t a plan in place.  Most college graduates have a plan.  Right?  They’re either taking a job somewhere or starting graduate school.  I, of all people, should have had a plan.  I always have a plan.  This time was different; there wasn’t a plan.  All I knew was that I was in the back seat of a car headed East on I-40 and I was already feeling overwhelmed with all of the what-ifs. (What if I don’t find a job?  What if I can’t start paying my student loans back?  What if I end up in Rocky Mount forever?  What if my degree really is useless?  What if I need to see a doctor but don’t have health insurance?)

Now, almost five years later, I still don’t feel like I have a plan.  At all.  I was a Youth Ministry major and now I’m working as a Director of Admissions.  I was the one who thought she’d be married and living elsewhere by now, anywhere else.  I always saw myself on stage somewhere, honestly.  And you may be thinking that I somehow missed the mark along the way.  (I often wonder that myself.)  But that wasn’t the plan.  At least, that wasn’t God’s plan. 

Y’all know how much of a planner I can be.  That I’m a sucker for cute calendars and fun pens to color coordinate it all.  I’m learning that I don’t have to always have a plan.  As much as I’d like to sometimes.  And that’s a relief because if I did– I would be feeling like an epic failure right about now. 

I’ve been reminded, in some pretty painful ways lately, that God’s plan is bigger and cooler than anything I could ever come up with.  I’m being reminded that He still, absolutely, has the plan in place and in motion and that should be enough for me.  I’m being reminded that, if I’ll stop focusing on what the future has in store, I can be so much more faithful today.  And today is all I’m promised so today is where my focus should be.  

To say that I’m there yet would be misleading…