Letting Go

I’ve been to this spot many times in my life. It’s the place where I go to hope. It’s a secret place, a place that I don’t allow many to come to. In this place I allow my dreams go wild. My imagination runs frantic through the situations of everyday life. Some that I allow into this place allow me to be myself and dream with me. Others mock the dreams, because they are unrealistic and illogical. Some simply ignore them all together; others cut them up and put them on a platter to show the world that they are unfulfilled. I’m very careful with who I let peak in, and I’m even more careful of who I let walk in.

Lately I’ve been storing up more dreams than usual. I’ve been making imaginary plans that I would love to see come and pass. I’ve been making mock arrangements and in my fantasy world I envision what it would be like if these things come true. Whatever is in this place is sacred, for only those who can see it come to pass to see. There lies one problem with this place. It doesn’t belong completely to me. A while back, I gave this place over to God. He allows me to tend to it, add to it, take away from it and even expand it, but I have given him full access to do the same. At initial decision time this was easy, living it through day by day has been the hardest thing in the world.

I’ll make all these beautiful dreams with my future, girls or school and have it all planned out perfectly in my head and then out of nowhere I’m blindsided. God changes things around on me. The girl I like doesn’t like me back, I won’t get accepted into the school I want to go to, doors are shutting not opening to go to the city I want to work at. Ever since I’ve let God into my ‘secret place’ I have made myself so unbelievably and painfully vulnerable. Sometimes I’ll pretend he didn’t change anything, and I’ll go on living like my plans still the right one. It doesn’t take long for me to realize there is no point. If I ever want to live a life, a life to it’s fullest, then I best be following the plans and the desires that God has laid out for me.

It’s painful and it’s dramatic but there hasn’t been a time yet that I have regretted going forward in what lies ahead. Every time I look back and regret a decision or action, I knew ahead of time it wasn’t the way I was supposed to go. Every time God shut a door, I would pry it open and go in it anyway. Every time God would say know I would justify a million reasons in my head why really he meant yes. The hardest part about this place is that it is now shared. God controls anything he doesn’t life, God moves forward and draws back. He changes my desires and he removes other ones. He makes my plans backfire and sometimes he creates entire new agenda’s that start to move forward. It’s so hard because I have to learn to let go. I have to learn to let go of my plans because I have to learn to trust that God’s are better. I have to trust that God has my best interest in mind and that he isn’t just some guy who does thing for no purpose.

This goes against everything that everyone around you says. We grow up thinking to look out for number one. Always make sure that you always have your best interest in mind. To give that all up, and give your destiny to someone else, is to make yourself vulnerable and broken. It’s the most difficult experience that I go through daily, but in the end, without fail, it is the most rewarding. So as I let go of one more dream I had all figured out, may God grant me peace beyond my understanding of what he doing.