Surrendering My Teaspoonful

So lately I've been realizing that my plans and God's plans might not be exactly the same.

Um.... hmm.

I've always assumed it was just a timing thing. Okay, God, I can wait for my plans to come about. I don't mind if it takes a few years... But there's this sense of entitlement that my plans are going to happen because I obviously know best. It doesn't even occur to me that God might have something else in mind.

Specifically, these ruminations have been related to marriage. It is my dream, my plan if you will, to marry and have a family. I've wanted to adopt children for as long as I can remember. Lately, I've been pining for it. How ready do I have to be, God? You've given me these desires and You are not cruel. Surely You won't fill my heart with dreams and then withhold them from me?

Elisabeth Elliot encourages her single readers to view their singleness as a gift to be given as a fragrant offering to God. But she acknowledges that "to make that gift an offering may be the most costly thing one can do, for it means the laying down of a cherished dream of what one wanted to be, and the acceptance of what one did not want to be." (The Path of Loneliness)

That made me cry a little bit. I don't want to, was pretty much all I could whine to God.

Over the next couple days, I quietly realized that, unlike me, God is not planning my whole life around marriage. Whether it's in His plans or not, He is working for my good right now. He's not just saying, Ok let's get Emma prepped to get married. Oh wow, she's being really immature today. Add another year until she meets Fabrizio*.  No! It's not like that at all. Yes, He is preparing me to become whoever I'll grow up to be, but He's put me in this place because it's good for me right now.

"If you ask your Father for bread, he will not give you a stone. If you ask him for a fish, he will not give you a serpent (see Matt. 7:9-10). It may not be bread. And it may not be a fish. But it will be good for you. That is what he promises (Rom. 8:28)."
John Piper, Suffering and the Sovereignty of God

Let's get honest here. I sincerely hope that I don't stay single forever. I certainly don't want to stay in this job forever. But I can lay down my cherished dreams and accept what I don't want to be -- although I won't lie, I cry about it sometimes. When I cry, though, I can rest in the knowledge that even though it's not bread and fish, it is good for me.

"With what misgivings we turn over our lives to God, imagining somehow that we are about to lose everything that matters. Our hesitancy is like that of a tiny shell on the seashore, afraid to give up the teaspoonful of water it holds lest there not be enough in the ocean to fill it again. Lose your life, said Jesus, and you will find it. Give up, and I will give you all. Can the shell imagine the depth and plenitude of the ocean? Can you and I fathom the riches, the fullness, of God's love?"
Elisabeth Elliot, The Path of Loneliness

*Fabrizio is our family's name for whoever I marry