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Uncharted Waters

Uncharted Waters

I don't know about you, but my personality is very-much-so type A. I plan, I prepare,  and I expect everything to work out in the most perfectionistic way possible. (and yes, making up words is a part-time hobby of mine.)

Lately, I'm realizing now-more-than-ever that my expectations aren't readily lining up with my reality. 

As I realized this, I immediately had to ask myself...

Why? 
Is there an error in my planning? my preparations? my expectations?

Honestly, as I began to explore these thoughts… I acknowledged the answer I was looking for. The reasons my expectations aren't lining up with my reality is because I'm simply not being realistic about the demands I place on myself, the people around me, the situations I find myself in, and the future I have imagined since I was a little tyke scream-singing "deep and wide" into the family video camera.

Since I highly doubt that the sweet little video of my singing will ever be removed from the family video archives, my mind reverts there time and time again, noting that not only is God's love massively DEEP and thankfully WIDE….. but also, sometimes, LIFE is also DEEP and WIDE - and not always in a welcoming-huggy-embracing type of way, either.

Sometimes, the hurts and pains and disappointments in life run DEEP. They cut DEEP. They hit you in places so close to the core of who you are that they alter you. They change your perspective.  They affect your desires and passions. They provide you with an alternative direction in life. They affix who you are today and affect who you will become tomorrow. 

And sometimes, just because the sun sets and restarts into a new day, the hurts and pains and disappointments don't go away. Rather, they linger for WIDE margins of time… all the while, leaving us dazed. confused. wondering. wandering. lingering. and clinging onto anything that will give us hope.  (or, at the very least, give us an explanation for "why" things happen in the ways that they do.)

All of that beating-around-the-bush nonsense to say this: I feel as though I've entered a time/season of my life where I'm completely in the midst of uncharted waters.

The plans I've made have failed.

And the disappointment of it all, quite honestly, hurts.

But, in the midst of it all, I'd be the world's biggest fool to say that God's character is in jeopardy because of it all. Rather, in the midst of the madness, I feel God's character and presence in my life have been magnified. now more than ever.

Without a doubt, I know that God has a plan for me. 

And that it's nothing short of GOOD.

No matter how DEEP and WIDE this "uncharted water" season of my life may appear, I am reminded that God's love is so much deeper and so much wider and His plan is so much greater and higher than anything I could have ever even imagined on my own.

So instead of focusing on the failed plans,
the disappointment,
the hurt,
and the uncharted waters that lie all around me,
I choose to focus on the only One Who sustains - the Creator of the oceans that keeps me moving.

If you're not convinced that His love and His plan override everything that you're currently going through as well, I think I have something from the Hill family home video archives vault that you just might need to see.

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