I have absolutely no idea what comes next.
Is this the season where I finally throw in the towel, pack my bags, and move back to California? Is this the time where I’ll make new friends and form unbreakable bonds? Is this the part of the story where I find my Prince Charming and live happily ever after? Or maybe it’ll finally be the year where I pay off my credit card bills. I don’t know.
What I do know- and what I have been clinging to for dear life- is that God is so good. And not only is He good, but He provides and He protects and He goes before me and He fights my battles and He does immeasurably more for me than I can ask for or imagine. I know this because the Bible tells me so, but I believe this because I’ve lived it.
God provides.
Last June when I had absolutely no idea where I was going to live or how I was going to afford rent or what I was going to do with all the furniture I owned, God came through. In what felt like a blink of an eye, He provided housing for me. And not just a rinky dink roof over my head, but a two bedroom/ two bathroom apartment only ten minutes away from work. So not only do I get to roll out of bed at 7:30 AM and still make it to work on time, but I have a whole extra bedroom that I get to bless people with whenever they want to come visit me. My mom has had a place to stay when she comes to visit. A friend of a friend of a friend had a place to live when she was transitioning in her move to Hawaii. Cousins had a place to sleep when flights were changed. God provided me a really incredible place to call home.
God protects.
When I was studying abroad in Barcelona, I decided to ride a horse for the very first time. And all was swell until the horse decided to run full sprint, and I had no way of stopping him. Then before you know it, I go from sitting atop this horse to falling flat on the ground and laying on the side of the road. But the absolutely crazy part was that the entire couple mile trail we took was covered in rocks and broccoli sized boulders, and I happened to fall into a mostly dry muddy patch. God protected me from not only falling and hurting myself but from a potentially terrible injury.
God goes before me.
I have always been the girl with a plan. Whether it be five years from now or five minutes, I’m pretty certain what I’ll be doing next. (Except for this season of course) But no matter how much planning I do or preparing I set up, something always seems to be in the way of me getting there. So in every big, tremendous, life-changing event, I get stuck or I get scared, and I’m mere moments away from being there. That’s when God takes my hand and walks me through it. He knows what the end result will be and He’s tested every outcome, so He pulls me alongside Him so I can get there too.
God fights my battles.
Months before heading off to college, it seemed like everything I had control over flipped upside down and all was slipping through my grasp. It was a flood of things I just could not manage on my own. There was no chance in which I would come out victorious over the situation. So I stopped trying to fight- though my fight looked and felt mostly like drowning in water- and I gave it over to God to see how God would do it. And He not only fought my battle, but He made every obstacle move out of the way and squashed any difficulty that would come towards me. That’s how God fights, and He always wins.
God does immeasurably more for me than I can ask for or imagine.
Living in Hawaii was never, ever part of my vision board. I had no idea this would be a desire of my heart nonetheless a viable possibility after graduating college. Hawaii was a fun place I vacationed every now and then with family, but I could have never imagined it be the place I call home. The place my heart loves and adores. The place where I can look around and at any given moment see God’s glory through His creation. Hawaii is the place my soul wanted but didn’t know it needed. And God blew me away by cultivating this life for me. It was never something I asked for or even imagined, but God did what I couldn’t then foresee.
So, again, I have absolutely no idea what comes next. But I can trust in who God is and what He is doing in my life because I have experienced the many different ways He upholds who He says He is.