When Your Life Plans Don’t Pan Out

Today is my 39th birthday. As I celebrate turning another year older, I find myself thinking about time. How much is left? How much time has gone by already? Am I using my it wisely? Mostly, though, I’m thinking about what I thought my life would be like at this point compared to the reality I am living. In truth, my life hardly resembles what I imagined when I was younger. One might say my life plans failed.

My Life Plans At Twenty

I had general thoughts about who I would be when I grew up. As strange as it is for a Type A person, I was fairly laidback about a lot of the details of my future life. The general picture was pretty basic. I believed I would:

1. Have a professional career

2. Be married

3. Have two children

4. Live in an upscale suburban home

5. Send my kids to public school

The Reasoning For My Life Plans

That list seems reasonable. Why not achieve those things? And, actually, that was essentially my reasoning. I figured it sounded good. It was the life I saw others leading in my community, and it was presented as the ideal in magazines, television, and movies. I assumed this was the blueprint for most lives in America.

In addition to the well thought out reason “everyone else is doing it,” I wanted to be important. All my plans were built on some level of vanity. I grew up in apartments, and I was embarrassed about that. My friends lived in nice houses with professional parents, and they all looked at me in a way that suggested they saw me as less than. My life plans evolved into the goal of being enough in others’ eyes.

Finally, I wanted to be successful. Most people do. I loved when others saw my achievements and shared with me how impressed they were by them. Vanity and pride were, again, taking center stage in my life planning.

Life Plans Vs. Reality At Thirty-Nine

So, did my life plans fail? A little, I guess. It depends on how you look at it.

1. Have a professional career

I did that. I earned a master’s degree, and I practiced school social work. However, I only stayed in my profession for two years, and I currently have no intention of ever returning to that work again.

2. Be married

Check! I am married. It took longer than I expected to get married, but I did eventually tie the knot.

3. Have two children

I accomplished that quickly after getting married. Then, I went ahead and had three more. I’m going to say this is not quite an accomplished life plan, however, because I meant to minimize the impact of motherhood on my life with two kids. Five has only amplified the role of mother in my life.

4. Live in an upscale suburban home

My husband and I bought a foreclosed house on the edge of a dangerous neighborhood as our starter home. Next, we bought a one hundred twenty-five-year-old Victorian home in a small town away from any kind of suburbs or sense of “upscale.” Today, we live in a parsonage in a rural town so small it sometimes doesn’t register as a legitimate mailing address. Life plan fail, I suppose.

5. Send my kids to public school

Never have. Never will (God willing). Plus, I homeschool them instead. Isn’t that as far from public schooling as I can be? Failed life plan.

Did My Life Plans Fail?

Am I a failure? Did my plans fail? These are the questions a 39th birthday can dredge up. I think it is easy to look at the hopes and dreams from my early twenties and say that my plans failed or that I have wasted my life. I also believe that viewpoint is completely wrong.

God’s Plans Never Fail

At the center of all of my plans we can find me. I wanted to be noticed, validated, and highly esteemed. I longed to fit in and look like everyone else I saw. My life plans were simply created to emulate the lives around me that I deemed successful. But successful by whose standards? Mine? Theirs? God’s?

Today, I live a life that can be characterized by being unseen. My family and I are in a quiet rural community in which I serve as my husband’s help meet and my children’s educator and discipler. Yes, this is an oversimplification, but my point is that I am not living some spectacular public life filled with accolades. My life is simple and focused on biblical, Christian living. However, if anyone would like to cheer me on during laundry, let me know. I’ll post a video…

I thought I knew what would make me happy. I wanted the same things that everyone else seeks out on their journeys to self-actualization or self-discovery or satisfaction or whatever. But have you ever seen that work for anyone? I believed my tight grip on specific life plans that followed a similar pattern to everyone else would satiate all my needs and wants. God knew better.

1. Have a professional career

I learned plenty of useful professional skills in my education and job, but God was preparing me for raising our children, supporting a husband with a call to ministry, serving in a church, homeschooling, and having a witness of Christ in my daily life. I wanted a professional life, but God gave me something that truly fulfills me instead.

2. Be married

The Lord gave me the right man at the right time. Had I married the guy I thought I would marry when I was twenty, then life would have been so much harder for me. That gentleman and I were a poor match. If I had married Chris, my husband, before we were saved, then our marriage would not have been built on Jesus and would have most certainly significantly struggled.  God’s timing was, as usual, perfect.

3. Have two children

Children are a blessing (Psalm 127:3-5), and I would have limited myself to only two! My life would have been absent of so much love and personal growth if I hadn’t had all five of my children.

4. Live in an upscale suburban home

There is nothing wrong with living in a nice suburban house. As for me, though, I have found that God led me to a community I would have never given a second glance years ago. And He gave me such a heart for the people of rural Wisconsin! Meanwhile, I find the hustle and bustle of the suburbs more tiresome each time I return to visit. The Lord is just full of surprises!

5. Send my kids to public school

I have written about why I homeschool and why you should, too. So, I won’t get deep into this topic. Suffice it to say that the Lord put homeschoolers in my life who, without even trying to talk me into it, made homeschooling seem like the best way to educate my kids. My time as a school social worker also showed me behind the scenes issues at schools that I wanted as far away from my children as possible. The last eighteen months or so (thanks, Covid) have only solidified my position on homeschooling.

Final Thought

I thought I knew who I wanted to be. My vision of the life I would be leading as I finished up my thirties is radically different from the life God has given me. Am I mad about that? Not at all. It’s fun to look back at old dreams and plans. We can see how we’ve grown and changed over the years. As Christians, we also have the opportunity to delight in failed plans. God’s hands are all over those “failures,” and we get to celebrate and praise Him for directing our paths and fulfilling the plans that matter most…His.

I never fail to be amazed at how much I don’t know. And the more I know God, the more clear it becomes to me that He has it all figured out, not me. I can rest easier and trust that His perfect plans don’t need my approval, and it is all right to let go of my old life plans. It’s not a failure. It’s agreeing with our omniscient God that He knows better than I do what is best. So, maybe we would all do better to get out of His way and hold onto our own life plans loosely while enjoying the life He created for us.

“A man’s heart deviseth his way: but the Lord directeth his steps.”

Proverbs 16:9

Have you ever fought against God to keep the plans you knew He was putting to an end?

Image courtesy of Cathryn Lavery via Unsplash.