Too Big for My Britches

I used to be a blogger. But after the events that culminated in my leaving Florida to move to southwest Georgia almost a year ago, I decided to give it a rest. For those of you who have encouraged me to start writing again, I am still considering it. I think I am finding my voice again. Here is what I was thinking about not long after I moved to Georgia. Hopefully there will be more to come in the near future.

It has now been a few months since my last entry. I had planned to give a run down of the last few months of my life since making the decision to uproot my life in Florida and move to southwest Georgia. I have decided to leave those thoughts in the past for now. I have a really hard time moving on. I tend to let things simmer for much longer than necessary. I just don't snap out of it very quickly. I believe this is a weakness of my personality type. And, speaking of that, if I learned nothing else during my four years in Florida, I learned about personalities. This has become something of a fascination with me--attempting to understand personalities and why people do the things they do. I admit that one of the reasons I wanted to make a change was because I got tired of having to be the one who understands. Forgiveness is one thing. Being a doormat is quite another. In the end, I do believe God opened a door for me to step away from my former situation (which, for the most part was very positive) and into a new one that may just have been created for me especially.

But, to say it is the way I would have planned it, would not be true. I have talked about this over and over again, and you would think by now I would have gotten it, but God's plans are often not my plans. In fact, I have begun to believe God chooses paths for me just to reassure me of how bad my planning really is. This is especially frustrating for someone who likes to have everything mapped out months/years in advance. Why is it that I cannot do the things I really want to do? Because God has something better planned for me--something that I cannot imagine. I think about how the Apostle Paul had his life completely together and then he came to a fork in the road and was forced to make a change. How different was Paul's life from what he had planned? If someone had told me when I graduated from high school that I would be living in southwest Georgia in 20 years, I would have told them they were mad.

But here I sit in southwest Georgia, as assured as I ever have been in my life that I am where I should be. I had a parishioner ask me the other day if there were things I missed about living in Florida and I admit that there are some things I wish I had here, but those things are trivial in comparison to what I have been given by being obedient to God's call.


Last week we visited Plains, Georgia, the home of former President Jimmy Carter. Talk about a tiny little place--less than 700 residents in the entire town. We went to visit the historical site and watched a short movie about the president's life in which his wife, Rosalynn talked about their return to Plains after Jimmy's father died in the 1950s. She said she was not very happy to move back to Plains, that she liked her life, that she felt she had outgrown it. But she had gotten a little too big for her britches and she realized not long after moving back that she still had things to learn from her tiny hometown. Her statement resonated with me because I know I would not be here if God did not have something to teach me. And just when I think I have it together, God has a way of reminding me that He is the one putting things together.

"Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus." (Philippians 3:12-14, ESV)