Wherever Life May Lead

I have always been a dreamer. Nothing is too big or out of reach. Never has a day gone by where I haven’t taken time to dream of the future and what may lie ahead. However over the last few years I have been forced to pull myself out of my dreams and face the reality in front of me. The time following my high school graduation to Christmas of my freshman year in college held some of the hardest moments I have ever had to live through and never want to again. Between being too young to know how to handle the circumstances and being too immature to face the facts of what needed to be done I found myself a few months later living a life different from the one I had been living before. I would never tell a young girl or boy not to dream of what their life may hold but I would recommend keeping a firm grasp to the sturdy ground. It took me coming through fire to find the oasis of what I never had anticipated but wanted more than anything. I use to kneel by my bed at night and pray that the Lord would deliver me from all of the pain that overwhelmed my body and know that he was teaching a lesson to a struggling student. Progressively I began to pick up the pieces of what life I had lived and lay out a new path to follow. Like a mosaic of my past and the unknown future ahead I was ready to listen instead of demand. For years I had made my own destiny and now I found myself hopelessly devoted to the plans that had been laid for me. Over the past year or so I have continued upon a different destiny that shines a much brighter future than the one I had seen through the dark tunnel before. I began to find interest in education and other hobbies once again. I changed the way I handled relationships and social interactions between friends and family. Even though there were still problems that arose born from the tragic events engraved in my past I was now equipped with the materials I needed to graciously overcome them. It was not until recently that I woke up from the sleepiness that I had been suffering from for the years past and realized that I was happier at this very moment than I had ever been when I constructed my own future. I had listened to the Words of the Lord and the advice of close mentors and now found myself in sheer bliss. Long ago when I came to the brink of continuing in my destructive ways and beginning a new I had this underlying voice telling me that I was leaving everything I ever stood for. I was giving up my dreams and my plans for the future that I knew I wanted and had to have in order to live happily. Now I can see that that voice was not the true spirit of whom I am but the person that I had habitually become and needed to leave in the past forever. What if I had continued? What if I had kept tearing away at life as if it was only what you made of it? What if I had kept telling God where I was going to go? What if I had never lifted my hands to the heavens and screamed to the light from above that I was giving in, giving up and stepping away from everything I stood for but what was killing me? All of these questions make me so deliriously happy that I did. I turned my back on the poison of younger years and walked into a new life of promises not declared by myself but by God whom was willing and wanting to give me the happiness I desired but could not and would not reach on my own. I am so grateful to the people, places and situations that had to happen in order for me to find myself in the standing that I am today. The peace of knowing that even through the drenching rains I will find shelter. I will grow like a never-dying floral vine. There will be thorns along the way but just at the right moment a speck of color will peek through. Life cannot be planned in an agenda or on a calendar. You cannot map out every event that will arise and if you could where would be the surprise. It took me falling to the end of the slippery rope I had been braiding to understand that the life I longed for so much was already carved in my destiny. And one day, like today I would find myself happier than I could have ever envisioned and none of that would be because of the plans I had prepared.