Making and Breaking Plans

This past week has been really emotionally trying for me. In the past made great plans for the week of the Fourth of July that sadly could never come to be. In fact, these are only a few of the many plans that I know will never come true. 

Isn't it funny how we make plans so far into the future that we expect to come about exactly as we want them to? We assume that all our dreams will pan out just as we hope. We plan for tomorrow and next month and five years to come. We think that we have control over what happens and what we can do. Our plans just ensure it will be how we want. But it doesn't work that way. 

It even says so in the Bible. "A man’s heart plans his way, but the Lord determines his steps" (Proverbs 16:9 HCSB). God tells us that we can plan all we want but ultimately He has a plan for us that will come about. No matter how much we want something to happen, God will allow it to happen exactly as He desires. 

I thought this week was going to be very different than it was. Saying goodbye to someone also meant saying goodbye to plans and dreams and wishes. But this week turned out every bit as good or better than I could have imagined. It was nothing like I planned, but it was perfect. It was what God wanted.

I think I'm learning to take everyday in stride. Every moment as it is. I want to live every second without regret and to the very fullest. Who knows if I'll wake up tomorrow, take another breath, see my friends again after we part ways, see my next birthday...the list goes on. I don't want to look back on a single moment with anything but fondness and joy at how I spent that time. 

I want to engage in meaningful relationships with others, be fully present in all situations, seize every opportunity that comes my way. I can dream and hope and wish, but I want to only make plans that are temporary. I want to make plans that are okay if they don't come about. It's hard to miss something if it was never set in stone upon my heart in the first place. 

Hardened Faces or Hardened Hearts

Today as I was stopped at a stoplight, I began to look at the people driving the cars passing by me.  Have you ever done this? It's funny-when we're driving we feel a false sense of privacy.  When we're alone in a car we'll sing along to songs we don't want others to know we listen to, we'll multitask way more than when there are passengers with us, we'll do things like brush our teeth, shave, put on makeup, etc. just because we don't think anyone else will know or see or care.  I'm the first to admit that I'll sing loud and proud when I'm alone in my car.  I belt those songs out like my car is a soundproof box, and my voice won't work outside of it.

Well today as I was driving, I watched seven or eight cars pass me by, but one car stands out to me in particular.  A man in his twenties was driving alone in the car-not unusual by any means.  However, his face is one I don't think I'll soon forget.  Unlike the majority of faces I see each day, this man was smiling.  Not a polite grin or a smirk or just a slight, closed mouth smile, but a full-blown, sparkle-in-the-eyes, shining smile. I have no idea what made this man so happy, but his joyfulness made me think.  Why should a smile be so out of place? What happened to society that something so normal and natural is now the exception not the norm?

I have to wonder how America has fallen so far from just half a century ago.  Sure, we care more about equality and acceptance and have rights provided to everyone regardless of, well, almost anything, but generally speaking, people seem much more closed off, angry, and hard-hearted.  What happened to the days where families would sit on the front porch late into the evening spending time with friends and neighbors, sharing stories and laughing together? When kindness, common courtesy and manners were more important than climbing the business- or social-ladders and making the best for ourselves.

I go to a school where walking to class means saying hello or smiling to everyone you pass regardless of whether you know them or not.  Taylor University is a considered a bubble sometimes.  It's a bubble away from the outside world, and in a way that's a bad thing, but I don't think of it like that.  In my Taylor bubble, I learn that a friendly smile can make someone's entire day, holding the door for a classmate with too many books is a gesture that should be normal, sitting down with someone who's eating alone can be the only act of kindness they see that day.

Our hardened faces may mask our true feelings, our struggles, and ourselves, but I think what a hardened face really shows is the hardened heart that lies behind it.  That young man smiling in the car today might not have the perfect life, or maybe he does, but his smile spoke to me saying that regardless of the good or bad in his life, he's choosing to be happy. Now that's a choice I want to make.