I cringe when I think of High School....

I was a dork. I thought I was cool. I liked boys, plural. I couldn't make up my mind between other dorks, jocks, goody goodies, or the bad ones. I loved sweat pants, but I found importance in dressing 'cute' some days to get attention. I was a 'good girl' just a little 'ornery'. Outta my siblings, a little ornery landed you in the black sheep category. Everyone else was intelligent and applied themselves. They were sure about where they were and where they were heading. There were few things I was sure about.

One of the things I was sure about was my future. In my here and now of my senior year, I was going to have fun, earn the title class flirt (for some reason I was secretly proud of that) and wait patiently for my planned out future. I visited a few colleges before someone told me about one out by Chicago. Hopped on a plane, by myself, was picked of at the airport by the friend of someone who knew someone, and stayed in the dorm with that guys girlfriend. By the time I got off the plane in Chicago, I was sold. Not because of the city itself or the college at all...but because when I stepped off that plane in a huge airport and had no idea where I was going, I fell in love with the adventure. I fell in love with being independent. The college was cool, though I'm not sure it was a whole lot different than many I coulda went to in the same state. But it was farther away than any I looked at and I loved that. When I stepped off that plane I started planning the rest of my life. 

It looked like this:

I will go to college here. For journalism and broadcast news. I will fall in love with someone here, either from here or another state, one that had nothing to do with Ohio. I'll go where ever he wants to go really. Holidays would mean plane rides, I would experience airports all the time. I'd fly alone. I'd fly with a spouse. I'd fly with my kids. I'd work in sky scrappers. People would say "turn the channel to such and such, Kristen's doing the news!"

It still sounds fun to me. But obviously it happened way different. I came home after one year and started dating, not only from Ohio, but someone I knew for many many years. I fell in love, fast and hard. I ;moved home after my sophomore year and changed everything. My degree went to whatever I could get fast so I could settle down and be his wife. I got pregnant 7 months into marriage and have been a stay at home mom for three and a half years. I traded sky scrappers for silos and cornfields. Exciting business looking strangers for amish and faces I grew up with. I traded business suits for all day pj's, and my face on the news for days without seeing people at all. 

You can imagine that sometimes I feel like I've failed and let more than myself down. 

You can also imagine the light that went on last night while sitting in a room full of high schoolers, some that act just like I used to :yikes:, when Stu said "trust that God's plan for you is better than the plan you have for yourself." 

My mind immediately went back to when I was the age of most of the girls in the room. To my dreams. To my goals. To my black and white plan. I know I am right where God wants me right now. I also know I'm so far from where I ever planned I would be. Somedays are easy to trust in this plan and the path that I'm on. But days like yesterday are full of gross poop stories, hurt feelings, grouchy kids, feeling isolated, and never ending messes that no one will congratulate you for cleaning. Those days I especially need to trust God's plan for my life over the one I had.

I am a stay at home mom, helping raise the next generation. I'm worshiping every week with hearts that are wide open to love, acceptance, and God's plan for them.  I'm changing the world in sweatpants and t-shirts. And even when I'm grouchy or beat down by a career driven world, I can have a joy, a peace, because there is a plan worth trusting, and I don't have to write it.