Puzzle Pieces

I always forget how much I love spring time at LSU.

Maybe that's because I've only had one spring to love so far.

It is the first day of school for the spring semester. I'm sitting outside in the courtyard of the business college, eating a ham and cheese sandwich and drinking a juice box while fighting the wind on its insistence that I eat my own hair for lunch, and I am content.

I struggled a lot last semester with contentment, and I've decided I will not struggle with that this semester.

I've been fretting a lot about what I want to do when I graduate, and even what I want to do this summer. Or rather what I feel like the Lord wants me to do. If it's not on my mind, I'm trying my hardest to keep it from being on my mind; which actually means it's inherently on my mind!!!! And even without knowing what I will be doing in the future, I've wanted to hurry up and be there because logically if I'm doing what I'm doing, then I'll be past the whole process of worrying about what I'll be doing.

Yeah, that all made sense.

But in taking a quiet moment with the Lord this morning, He just asked that I wouldn't fret so much about something that is so far in the future that I forget to take advantage of today.

Plans are important. I rarely do anything if it's not been planned. I can do spontaneity, if I've allotted a specific time for spontaneity if ya know what I mean. I live by my daily planner so much that we have become one. I have literally become a walking spiral notebook of various calendars.

So I'm not suggesting that we throw away thoughts of the future, because even God creates plans. Plans are not the issue.

It's more of living today with the knowledge that God is that author of plans... so even when it feels like your future is a dark cloud of impending chaos, it's really not. God is there in the dark cloud of impending chaos. And He's also here - in today.

And just as He has plans for the future, He has plans for today. So I'm being careful not to miss out on today's plans in fear of missing out on the future's plans.

There is no place I could go where God is not there, and that includes the future. He's given me no reason not to trust Him.

When I worried about whether I would go to public high school or remain homeschooled, He was with me and gave me a place.

When it became January of my senior year, and I still didn't know where I was going to college, He gave me an answer in His own time; and it was nothing short of His best.

When I started college and worried over where I belonged, who would be my people, He gave me a home.

Wherever I go, whatever I decide... God is there. And although I can't get a firm grasp on the puzzle pieces that are my life, the Lord knows what the end picture will look like. And I can trust that it will be beautiful, because He is the one who formed those puzzle pieces. I am not useless until I receive the whole picture, or even an idea of what the picture will look like. I don't have to shove and bend and force the pieces to fit together, but rather allow Him to give and take the right pieces when I need them.

And I trust that He's given me all the puzzle pieces I need for today.