The Plan

When I was young, someone told me that God had a plan for my life. I wasn’t sure I believed that. When all of your dreams and your worth are stripped away at the age of 8, while neighborhood boys leer at you and touch your body in inappropriate ways, hope dies. And so, when fourteen years later, a whisper in my heart said, “I have a plan for you!” I was desperate to believe it. But scared, too.

I thought: I’m not worth anything! What plan could there be for me?!

I could look at my past and see the devastation of my short life. Abuse. A broken heart. Broken dreams. So, really, what plan could there be for me?

But the voice kept whispering—“I have a plan for you!”

For the last twelve years, that voice has kept speaking to me. I can look back at the last twelve years and see the evidence that it must be true. Listening to that voice has gotten me out of huge disasters and has changed my life. I left a dead-end relationship and got a degree. I built a career and got the opportunity to travel, serving all over the world and making scores of friends. And God’s not done with me yet.

About three years ago, I started making friends in the Pacific Northwest. I followed the urge to visit and meet them, then began spending all of the time I could out there. And all the time, I have had a fluttery little feeling in my heart that I belonged there. But I would talk myself out of it. I mean, I’m from North Carolina and all of my family is here. I own a house here. And had worked for over six years in a full-time ministry job here. I had found my purpose here. Surely, I didn’t need to uproot myself and go 3000 miles when I’m happy here. But on February 21^st, the whispery voice that has always told me that there’s a plan for my life told me that it was time to live another part of the plan. It was time to GO.

I was reminded of something I heard Jon Acuff say: “Many of the adventures you will go on will not make sense to other people because the outcome is unknown. But journeys where the outcome is already known are not adventures, they’re errands. And you were created to do more than run errands.”

For the past three months, I’ve been slowly packing up my life in Benson, North Carolina. Today, I finally packed the last item into the trailer, looked at my sister-in-law and said, “Well, the house is all yours.”

The last three months have been a roller-coaster—and I’m not done yet. I still have a lot of adventure ahead of me. Driving almost 3,000 miles. Finding a job. Making a new home. And while it’s a good thing and I don’t regret any of it, it’s left me completely bone-weary.

This week as I continued to read Katie Davis’ story of following that same whispery voice to Uganda, I felt relief—that someone else understands the fear and the turmoil—and that in the end, it’s worth it.

Katie said,

 “I don’t always know where this life is going. I can’t see the end of the road, but here is the great part: Courage is not about knowing the path. It is about taking the first step.”

“I am thrilled and I am terrified, in a good way. Some call it courage; some call it foolish; I call it faith.”

I have no idea what my life on the other coast is going to look like. I don’t even know what tomorrow’s going to look like. But I’m willing to take one step at a time because I believe there’s a plan for me that’s bigger and better than the plan I have for myself. And I’m going to go see what that plan looks like, one baby step at a time.

This post is part of a weekly discussion that my friend and co-facilitator, Jason Stasyszen and I have been having on the memoir, Kisses from Katie. You don’t have to read the book to stick around for the discussion, but if you have written a response to this week’s chapter, feel free to link it up at the widget below!