Lord, Take My Plans and Give Me Yours

In February 2020, we packed everything we owned into a storage unit, handed back the keys to our rented apartment, and flew to Lisbon with only a one-way ticket.

It had taken a lot of planning to make it happen. But once we were there, it was everything we had hoped for. Pastel de natas in the morning. Good coffee. Long walks. Exploring a city we had fallen in love with. It was one of the happiest stretches of my life up to that point.

And then, about six weeks in, COVID happened.

Lockdowns were announced. Flights were getting cancelled. So we made the decision to come home, except we didn't have a home to come back to.

We moved in with parents, living out of bags. And within the same week, the industry I had been freelancing in, live events, collapsed completely. No trip. No work. No plan. No timeline for when any of it would change.

It was humbling. I had never had so many things in my life go wrong at the same time before. And in that forced stillness, with nothing to plan toward and nowhere to be, I did something I hadn't made much space for a long time. I sat down and asked God what He actually wanted for me.

The lockdown months became some of the most creatively alive of my life. With no events to work on, I started writing. More than I ever had. Just me, a laptop, and a lot of quiet. Slowly, doors started opening that I never would have found if the old ones hadn't closed. Opportunities I couldn't have planned for, because I never would have thought to plan for them.

Those things ultimately led to the devotional you're reading right now (with a good few years in between).

Now, I'm not saying God sent a pandemic. But I do think He used the stillness it created to finally get my full attention. Because the honest truth is, when life is busy and plans are working, most of us don't stop to ask what God wants. We ask Him to bless what we've already decided.

Proverbs 16:9 says our hearts plan the course, but the Lord directs the steps. That directing doesn't always feel gentle. Sometimes it looks like everything falling apart in the same week. But on the other side of that, looking back, I can see His fingerprints all over what felt like collapse.

You can't always plan your way to where God wants you. Sometimes He has to clear the ground first. And sometimes the most important prayer you'll ever pray is the one you only pray when you have nothing left to plan with.

Lord, take my plans and give me Yours.