I HATE IT when I’m driving home in the
middle of the night from some outrageously awesome party because I’m so cool
and popular (i.e. I fell asleep on my parents couch while watching my big fat
gypsy wedding) and I get stuck at a red light. And there is not a single car in
sight. But I stop at the red light anyway, because years ago some dick named
Murphy made up a law that says the one time I drive through a red light at 3am
in the morning on a completely empty road, a cop will appear out of nowhere and
take all my money. If you ask me, Murphy should have got a hobby and a wife and
left the law-making to the professionals.
So I’m sitting at this red light, waiting
for no-one, twiddling my thumbs, writing incredibly rude letters in my head to
local councils, town planners, the inventor of the traffic light’s
grandchildren, President Obama and the Queen complaining about the sheer
frustration of sitting at this traffic light. Then, of course, a car drives up.
And the light they are driving towards is green. And instead of waiting
patiently and gracefully for a red light, like I have been doing for what seems
like the past six thousand years, they get to drive straight through. No
stopping, no waiting. They don’t have to earn their green light. They just skip
straight to the happy ending of reaching their destination in uninterrupted driving
merriment.
Awkward confession #5 : sometimes I feel
like this whole ‘God has a plan for you’ thing is a myth. All my life the next
step has been obvious – finish year 1, move on to year 2; finish high school,
go to uni. Everything has been nicely straight-forward and pre-planned. But now
some foolish sucker decided it was a good idea to release me into the wild and
forgot to give me a map. There are a bajillion jobs in the world and I am
expected to find the one thing that I’m good at, that I enjoy and that I’m
‘meant to be doing’?! There are billions of men out there, and I’m supposed to
find one that I am compatible with and that I want to marry (or the more
difficult task of finding one that wants to marry me). My decisions have far
greater impact on the rest of my life, and it’s so much harder to determine
what the right decision is.
You know that old saying “man plans, God
laughs.” Sometimes I feel like I am God’s personal comedy channel. The number
of twists and turns my life has taken would give anyone whiplash, and I have a
horrible feeling that I ain’t seen nothing yet. I like to be in control and
know where I’m heading, but my picture of what my future is going to be has
changed so many times over the years. I was supposed to be living in a
different country right now. I was supposed to be a lawyer. I was supposed to
be travelling. I was supposed to be a missionary in Cambodia
What gets me is that so many people around
me seem to be getting things right. They have their dream jobs, they are
marrying their dream boy/girl, they are living the elusive dream. In a society of ‘do whatever YOU want to make
YOU happy right NOW’, I often find myself wondering why is it that everyone
else has the green light to skip ahead to their happy ending, while I’m still
stuck at the red light wondering when I got left behind?
A little while ago my dream job became
available. I was super excited to apply, until I realised I would need to drive
for the job. I’ve just been diagnosed with epilepsy which means I’m not allowed
to drive for a year. A bit of a fly in the ointment. I was furious. I felt so
ripped off. Why couldn’t something just work out? Is it really too much to ask
to have my dreams come true now? Why is it that I have to wait in amongst the
crap while other people get to be happy? (I will admit, I have spoilt-brat
tendencies when I am upset…)
I get so incredibly frustrated when things
don’t work out, but at the end of the day who’s to say that if everything went
the way I planned my life would actually be better. Or that I would be better
for it. The happy ending I pine for wouldn’t be a happy ending at all, it would
just be the beginning of a new chapter that would most likely bring with it
just as many challenges as the last. When I’m at my most unreasonable I have to
make a conscious effort to remind myself of this, to try and contain the
spoilt-brat within.
The real challenge is to try and find the
path God wants for me. I’ll be honest, I have no idea what that is and my
discernment isn’t always trustworthy. There have been times where I’ve got it
wrong. I’ve had a lot of road blocks that have sucked, but kept me on the right
path in times when I wouldn’t have listened if God had tried to just tell me.
So much good has come out of the unexpected. I’ve learnt so much, I’m so much
stronger.
The truth is, I don’t know where I’m going.
I can’t possibly know where I’m going. If there’s anything I’ve learnt it’s that
life is FULL of surprises. Sometimes the surprises are awesome. Sometimes I’m
disappointed. Life is a bit of a mixed bag. At times not knowing my future really
scares me. The unknown scares me. The possibility that I might get it all wrong
scares me. But in general, when I’ve got my head screwed on the right way I can
trust that it will all work out one way or another. God’s got my back. Even if
I go a mile off in the wrong direction, He will still welcome me home. My
discernment will get better. I will get better.
One day, years from now I’m going to be
chilling with my 20 cats, leaning on my Zimmer frame having a good
old-fashioned LOL about how my life turned out. If the first 23 years are
anything to go by, it’s certainly going to be an interesting ride.
In the meantime, I’ll try choosing streets that have roundabouts.
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