Along For the Ride

 

Some days you couldn't plan better; the street lights all turn green as you approach the intersections and there's a parking spot right in front of the store....just for you.  Then there are those days you wouldn't have planned but somehow ended up with anyway; days it's pouring down rain and not only are there no close parking spots, but you discover you somehow wound up without an umbrella.  I've planned and replanned my life a thousand times by now, the funny thing is much of how my life has unfolded hasn't had a whole lot to do with my planning.  Rightly so, it's not my life anyway.  The life I live God first gave me, and I gave it back to Him when I met His Son Jesus at the cross of Calvary and made Him my Lord and Savior.  I basked in His sweet, tender love when I first met my Savior, to know that He laid down His life as a sacrifice for my sin made me want to follow Him...anywhere.  I told Him, "You lead, I'm just along for the ride."

Yesterday my husband told me that we may need to move in the next couple of years with his career so we should start thinking about and praying about the possible places we could go.  The thing is, I don't want to move.  For one, I like the weather here in Texas and for two I wouldn't mind adopting again; I know how it worked for us in Texas and I'm not sure how or if it would work in another state.  But today, I met with an orthopedic surgeon for an x-ray of a benign tumor in my right thigh and I remembered, I'm just along for the ride.  When they first discovered the tumor they thought it was the scary kind; it looked like the remainder of my ride could be short.  In those moments it was ever so clear to me that my life is a gift, all of it, and it is a priviledge to walk it with Jesus, even those moments I didn't plan or wouldn't have chosen.  In those moment you could have asked me to move to Siberia and I wouldn't have argued.  But sometimes along the way I forget that I'm along for the ride and my thoughts and prayers begin to sound more like those of someone giving directions.  Then in love, the Spirit reminds me that I'm just along for the ride, that I don't need a plan I just need to seek The Planner.  I've got good ideas for my life but God has better ideas for eternity.  And if that doesn't make me want to let go of my plans and hang tight to His, I don't know what does.