Every time I didn’t understand

There’s a whole lot of things in life that I don’t understand. I don’t really get math most of the time and have recently been struggling in Spanish. I don’t understand why people get their hearts broken. Why we have to lose people we love and why dogs don’t live longer. I don’t get why I have panic attacks and anxiety at moments that I can’t control.  I can’t understand just how big the world truly is and how there’s so many people we’ll never even know. The world is full of questions that we’ll just never have answers to. I could sit here for a long time and write pages of all the things I just don’t get. The world is just complex like that. It’s so easy to get caught up in all the I don’t knows. It’s easy to question God in these moments and wonder what the heck is even going on. But I’m learning that we just simply aren’t supposed to always know. God knows and we have to trust in that.

I started college in August. It’s been a whirlwind of emotions, happy and hard. I think on social media, college seems perfect. Everyone is having the time of their lives 24/7 and everyone gets along. And while yah, college has some really happy parts, it can be hard too. I’ve made some great friends and memories but at the very same time Classes can be overwhelming and tough, managing a schedule is hard, making friends can be difficult and you miss your family. I’ve had moments in college so far that I flat out didn’t understand. I didn’t know why they were happening and I mostly just felt frustrated. I felt singled out and annoyed. I wondered why I was experiencing this difficulty. Why did I have to feel this hurt? But the thing that I’m learning is that we aren’t supposed to understand all the time. The plan for our lives wasn’t designed by us. Jesus controls it and he knows what he’s doing. Even in the frustrating times, they all have a purpose. I’d be lying if I said that immediately changes the difficulty that comes with it. Things can still be hard. But knowing that and remembering that you know who holds your future is important.

 

There’s been a fair amount of times in life that I didn’t get something I thought I wanted. I’d say this is a pretty common feeling. We get these plans for the future in our heads. We map it all out and have is all designed in our minds. But sometimes you get that closed door instead of the one you hoped would be wide open. No amount of knocking changes it. It’s frustrating to sit in front of a locked door. It doesn’t make sense. Why can’t the door just open, I’ve had this figured out forever. In my life, I’ve realized that the more I try to control the opened doors and chosen pathways, the more I’m realizing they aren’t mine to control. At the time, it hurts a lot and mostly makes no sense. I remember in middle school I tried out for the Volleyball team. I got cut the first day and had the coach tell me that maybe I just wasn’t cut out for Volleyball, I needed to be louder and more aggressive. I took this message to heart. I let it creep inside me until I believed every word. It was a closed-door I didn’t see coming. I let one locked door keep me from ever trying at the sport again. I let one locked door determine the path I took and the way I thought about myself.I let it make me feel like my quiet personality wasn’t good enough. I just didn’t understand. However, it was during this time in my life that I started to love writing. I found a love in expression through writing and now here we are. I didn’t know it at the time but that closed door lead me to another open one.

 

One of the biggest things I’ve learned thus far in life is that it’s unpredictable. If you told me I’d be going to college ten minutes from my house two years ago, I would’ve thought you were crazy. But the fact is we simply cannot control the plans for our lives. Jesus created us all with a purpose. It’s easy for us to get caught up in the plans the world tells us our lives should include. But at the end of the day, the one who holds tomorrow has had a plan for us since before we were even born, and it’s more perfect than we could even imagine. There’s going to be many locked doors, roadblocks, and confusing moments of hurt/loss in our lives. There’s so many times we just simply don’t understand. But the hard times don’t have to control us. Because one day, down the road, after you’ve tried all the doors that wouldn’t open and stepped over the holes in the road, you’ll come to a door that leads you to exactly where you need to be. There is purpose in the hard times and growth in the journey. And every time we don’t understand, leads us to every part of the plan, we never thought imaginable.

 

All the Love, Annie