Well! Here I am again with this “Moving on From the Life That You Thought You Wanted.” Listen, if you’re old school, this will be Part 2. But, if you’re new school, let’s call it the remix. However, the focus is looking at God as a Planner. This is not overtly spiritual, but it’s equally important. God is not reactive or impulsive. He’s a God of timing. I would also argue that God is strategic, intentional, and methodical about executing His intentions for His people. And whatever is a surprise to you is not a surprise to God because He is a Planner of our lives. 

Scripture collaborates in Jeremiah 29:11: “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

God burdens Jeremiah with a message for His people that is tailor-made to help elevate them out of their situation. The fact still remains today. God always sends specific individuals into your life to help guide, support, and to clarify your season to further your purpose. 

Let’s be clear. Even where you are, you didn’t get there by yourself. You had some help. 

Therefore, this blog has been tailor-made to encourage you to come out of your situation. You’re crying. Confuse. And disappointed. We get stuck in these past situations. But I affirm that God is a Planner.  

The frustrating part is that God doesn’t always tell us what the plan is. But we have to believe in what the plan does or will do. The plan God has for us will prosper us. Yes, it’s hurting you to the core. But it will prosper you in the future because God is a planner.

No, it’s not exciting sitting in the midst of our misery. But it’s a part of God’s plan because He is a planner. 

Comparably, as we’re sitting in our deep miserable situations, lost, confused, and disappointed it’s hard to believe that the the words misery and God are in the same sentence.

Or, If God loves us, why do we suffer? Christian or not, it’s a question that comes up repeatedly during times of grief and tragedy. In times of distress, we want to know that our suffering matters to God and that He cares about our pain. 

Yes, He does care about our pain because pain is God’s plan. 

And it still remains that God has a Master has a plan for our lives because He is a Planner. 

Pain is inevitable–we have to learn to endure the process. God allows certain events to be orchestrated throughout our lives for His glory and ultimately for our good. This is a hard realization for many because sometimes as Christians have this idea that if we do what God wants us to do, then He owes it to us to take suffering away. I don’t believe that anymore.

Suffering is just life. No matter where we are in life, pain and suffering suck! 

Not only – but also, God has created our answer before the devil created the problem because God is a planner “par-excellent.” So God has already made PROVISION for his people. “Pro” meaning before. “Vision’ meaning see.  

So is it fair to say that God saw this pain before you did? And that your pain has been planned before you knew it. Furthermore, God plans our lives according to what He sees, not according to what we see. 

God has given us sight for each day. However, we don’t know, nor can we see what going to transpire on that particular day.

Moreover, God sees our tomorrows so He must plan–what He sees for our lives, and not how we feel because He has PROVISION! 

So that’s something we lack and become frustrated with God about because He is a Planner. 

Can I say it’s the principle of perspective? 

The principle of our perspective is determined by where we sit. Where we sit determines what we’ll see. And what we see will determined what we’ll do. 

In the light of God is a Planner, if we desire to sit high, we’re at a different advantage point. Let me put it this way. In the words of #thesixfigurechick “Stop asking the wrong people for the right advice. Do your research.” 

In short, we have to stop asking people to help us see the plan God has for our lives. Besides, as God is our creator, shouldn’t He know the plan. 

God’s plan:  

• a detailed blueprint for doing or achieving something.
• an intention or decision about what one is going to do.
• a detailed map or diagram showing how something will be arranged. (Remember, in my last blog, I asked you to write out in full-details the way you would get to your friend’s house or favorite restaurant?) 

God plans our life with clarity and with His purpose in mind because hope and a future are waiting on us. See, the contention is, not only does God have plans for us, but He knows that we have plans for ourselves. 

Side note: If you don’t have a plan for yourself (snapping the fingers), let’s get to it. What are you waiting for?

I have also mentioned that we all have plans and expectations for our lives. Even, if they are unspoken; we still expect them. We just don’t realize we’re expecting those plans and when they don’t manifest, we become frustrated. 

Right? 

For example, on our birthday, we expect people to text, call, or purchase a gift to show us an expression of love. For many of us it’s unspoken or should I say we don’t have a list of people who will call us. But when a certain person doesn’t call, text, or purchase a gift. We’re feeling some type of way. 

Pause! 

So you stop. And you process! “They didn’t even text. They didn’t even call (checking your history of missed calls) and then say, I didn’t ask them to send me anything to my cash app? So, you mean to tell me I didn’t get a measly text message from them? I thought we were better than that.”

Proven! We all have expectations unconsciously. 

We have professional and relationship expectations of what our lives should mirror. Some of us are down to who we should have married and the state of the relationship now. We have expectations about our spiritual life. Where we should be, and how far along we should be, and what habits we should have overcome, and what dysfunctional behaviors we should have divorced ourselves from. 

We all have expectations in life. But we all fail to expect the unexpected. 

A key life skill that every individual must learn is the skill of managing and adjusting when faced with something we do not see coming. It’s a skill many of us lack because we’re caught up in our expectations. And what our lives are supposed to be and look like. 

Over and above that, are you in something right now, you didn’t see coming? Of course, you are. 

God is a Planner!

You’re right where you need to be. It’s incredibly important to believe that when our plans conflict with God’s plan; we have to be willing to submit and move on from the life that we thought we wanted–because God’s plans are better than the plans we have for ourselves. 

It’s a matter of perspective! Where we are sitting and what we are doing. 

You’re are probably on your knees by now. 

I just got up. 

Ponder for a moment. Is the pain and suffering you’re facing worth it? Who wouldn’t want God’s plan? Then, say, He sees things through His PROVISION! 

Consequently, if we’re going to move on from the life that we thought we wanted, we must be willing to leave the pain behind without getting the closure we thought we needed.

Man! Oh, man! Get off the floor again. 

Not to mention, some folks are still stuck in their past because they are waiting on the closure they need to move on. It’s kinda like asking someone to borrow money. And when the time comes to borrow the money, they find excuses for why they don’t have it. They say they’re running late or, they just don’t answer their phone. So you’re frustrated (and rightfully so–you should be) and anxiously awaiting the next time to confront them because you want closure. 

But here’s the thing. No matter what they tell you, you’re going to be stuck on replay about the many times you tried to call them and they left you hanging. So now, you’ve put your frustration in the hands of someone unwilling to acknowledge what they did wrong. 

To that end, people find excuses to keep themselves safe. Talking about the hard stuff is not something most individuals are willing to do. So you’re left grappling to find closure. 

Therefore, you have to be willing to move on without the answers you’ll never get. People know when they leave you with unfulfilled answers. 

But that’s when you get stuck expecting something from someone they didn’t get. So if you don’t bring closure, you get stuck with taking people (sometimes innocent people) through that same cycle, filtering emotions, you didn’t cause. 

Did you hear what I just said? 

Note to self: Do you know we don’t have closure if we are continuously asking ourselves questions about why did things happen the way that they did? Are they ever going to apologize or say that they are sorry for what they did to me? 

Yet we have to be willing to move on without the closure we thought we needed because God is a Planner. 

If we get the closure we need, there’s a lot of healing and inner connections that support our mental health. However, it’s only one perspective. You may want more closure through their lens, which can sometimes be more painful. In my opinion, it only compounds the situation even further. 

By the same token, God wants us to have closure. He desires for us to bury our past so we won’t have to keep revisiting it. 

Bury that thing. Put it in the ground so you can move into your future. You don’t need closure, you have a calling, you need your Planner to call you into where you need to be. 

Where to from here?

What if you never get the apology or the explanation you’re looking for? 

Could you be waiting on questions you don’t need answers for? 

My seasons and situations have been so painfully difficult, I’ve had to lean-in to what I know as opposed to what I don’t know. Because what I do know makes up for what I don’t know. 

As a result, you’ve come this far without the closure. And I do know that God works all things for the good of those who love Him because It’s for His good and His glory. 

God is a Planner. Just show up without the closure because you may never get it. Lean-in to what you do know. And trust God to be present when there are no answers. Move on from the life you thought you wanted because God is a Planner. 

In closing, let’s unlock your hope and future:

Admit the emotions: 

Sometimes God removes people from our lives because of our emotional attachment. They can’t take us any further. Simply put, they’re not in the plan. We pull people along in our relationships and fret over letting them go because they’re not equipped to go into our future. In short, we have emotional attachments that won’t do us any good. 

Is it fair to say that our reason for not letting go of the emotional attachments is because of our romanticized views of what life should be like? We think about the life we want with them. Those savoring moments without the emotional pain. 

For instance, we think about careers, cars, houses, and great relationships, and so on. But we only think about the size of the house and look of car. We consider the influence we’ll have on the job. The income we will add to our bank account and the exposure we’ll get over time. 

We don’t think about the increased pressure, the increased jealousy, the lesser margin, of free time we’ll have. Nor, the stress and volatility of that air-space of “being alone” because supposedly there are not people like us at the top. 

We have to be careful. Sometimes our emotional attachments can feel just like God because, in relationships, we want things so bad we make exceptions to our beliefs and standards when we see clearly they don’t value us. If we are highly emotional, it impairs our discernment. We are unable to think soberly, and do, and think things that we wouldn’t normally do or think.

That’s why it’s not good to try to make important decisions about relationships when we are emotionally intoxicated. It wreaks havoc. Unfixable havoc. Besides, we bleed on others (that’s also another one of my blogs). And when we get in that space, we have to ask ourselves those questions. Is this you God or Is this me? We can’t afford to become entrapped by something we can’t expose.  

Acknowledge the entitlement: 

We have to demand answers when we’re among chaos or people with radical behaviors. Behaviors that say…”You don’t deserve an answer.” You know how we say it… “I need some answers up in here right now.” 

This behavior is dangerous because when it is imposed on us, we don’t feel like we can move on from the life we thought we wanted. If we’re not careful, we’ll feel entitled to that behavior. Lingering close to an individual because we feel that it is God’s plan to remain in that relationship that is unfulfilled and chaotic. 

Refuse to revisit what we can’t revive: 

It’s your turn. You have to take the time to bury something for good and not return to retrieve it again because you feel it was purposeful. If something is dead in our lives, it can never give us life again. It’s dead. We can’t look for dead things among the living. 

I do a lot of reminiscing. It’s great to do and once you have extracted all the lessons you needed to learn from those situations. Then, bury them so they can never be revived again. Then, you have to stop torturing yourself with the past. You know those… “If I had done this…” Careful! People use our mistakes to keep us in a maze of misery. 

At some point, I had to learn. I’ll never get closure. I’ll never know the entire truth and I could not do anything about the past. I put my closure in the ground and told myself you will not allow this thing or others to keep torturing you. 

Trust God with our satisfaction: 

We trust God with our salvation because we can’t save ourselves. And we all have issues, habits that have been present in our lives–generational curses we are still trying to battle through.

But if we are sincere about our healing; we can’t keep dancing and trying to sweat ourselves to the next level because God is a Planner. 

I’m So Glad You’re Here!

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