Plans

I didn't know who I was supposed to be...at fifteen.

Don't make fun, but Fifteen by Taylor Swift gets me every time. Sometimes I swear she sings about my life. When I was a teenager I was in such a different place than I am now. If someone would have asked me then what my life would look like now I would have told them I was going to go to Berry, become a teacher, and marry my high school boyfriend. I had my life all planned out for myself, and I was comfortable.

My world came crashing down on January 16th 2007 when the love of my life broke up with me over the phone after 3 years of dating. It is now 2009, and almost 3 years later I can still vividly recall the heartbreak like it was yesterday. Being on the phone with him that night was surreal. It was like I was watching this break up scene transpire between someone else, and I was just watching it all happen. It was an out of body experience. I remember sitting on a chair next to my parent's bed thinking that I would never be ok again. The only word I can think to somewhat describe how I felt is despair. Food lost its taste, music became dull, and eventually everything that I had once found pleasing became boring and sad. I was so broken, and I had no idea where to begin picking up the pieces.

Robert Frost once said, "In three words I can sum up everything I have learned about life: it goes on." My life went on after January 16th. It was the second semester of my senior year and it was time to decide what college I was going to attend. I hadn't given college much thought until my junior year when an older friend of mine told me she was going to Berry College in Rome, GA. I had never heard of Berry before in my life, but listening to her tell me all about it got me interested. I went to visit her one weekend and fell in love. Berry was everything I could have hoped for in a college and more. The campus was beautiful, the people were friendly, and it was 2 and a half hours away from anything that remotely reminded me of the person who broke my heart. I filled out the application for admission the next week. A majority of students applying for college will, in addition to applying to their first choice school, apply to a safety school. Mine was Jacksonville State University in Jacksonville, AL. I got my acceptance letter from JSU in the mail in October of 2006, and my acceptance notification online from Berry in late January of 2007. It was a no brainer that I was going to Berry, until I got another letter in the mail from JSU in February. The university awarded me a scholarship that would pay for my tuition. After talking to my parents and going on a campus visit, my plans changed again when I enrolled as a student at JSU. If someone would have told me earlier that year that I would be giving up going to my dream school to attend my safety school I would have thought they were crazy. Turns out it's just life that's crazy.

In August 2007, when I should have been moving to Rome, I was moving to Jacksonville. Even though my high school sweetheart and I were over and I was enrolled at JSU instead of Berry, I still knew I was going to be a teacher one day. I had always felt a calling to ministry, but I never knew what opportunities that had, so I figured teaching would be a good alternative that I would really enjoy. However, the more I learned about teaching the more I realized I did not want any part of it. Lesson plans were boring, creating activities was a pain, I discovered that if I majored in education I would be spending my life doing something I hated, and I could not stand to live like that. Five majors later I decided on English, and after obtaining my undergrad I hope to become a youth pastor and possibly go to seminary.

My best friend told me last night that God laughs at plans. My life is the perfect example of that sentiment. When I was fifteen I had it all planned out, but God had something different in mind. Now, my life could not be more different than what I thought it would be back then. Everything got turned upside down, and it was hard to accept. I spent a lot of time being angry that my plans got messed with instead of embracing God's changes. Everyday I am seeing Him execute His plan for me in my life, and while sometimes it is still painful, I know the ending will be better than anything I could have ever planned for myself.

"Lord, I know that our lives don't really belong to us. We don't have what it takes to take charge of life. So correct us, God, as you see best." -Jeremiah 10:23-24