Architect's Plans

“A man’s heart plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps.” Proverbs 16:9

Have you ever been at a point in your life where you feel dissatisfied, restless, and as if you’re surrounded by regrets? Ideas, plans, dreams, hopes, desires…..something seems to have prevented so many things from coming to pass in our life together. Finances, health issues, and being “tied” to a place for various reasons have seemed to be our biggest obstacles. We can’t or won’t dismiss and ignore all of the wonderful things that HAVE happened and been fulfilled, but this sense of restlessness and feeling like we’re just going through each day without coming closer to reaching the dreams we’ve had for a long time is where we’ve been at for a while.

As I’ve been chatting about this with God, I saw a picture of architect’s plans laid out on a table before two individuals. I understood one to be myself or my husband and the other to be our Divine Architect, the Master Builder Himself. We were looking at the plans together, discussing each aspect of them. We would point things out to one another, each making suggestions or explaining our thoughts behind the plans being drawn a  particular way or even agreeing to make adjustments to the plans to better suit the overall end goal. What I loved about the picture I saw was that even though our Architect had so much greater knowledge than we had, He was willing to plan with us and even adjust things according to our ideas and perspective.

This picture made me think about how at the very beginning, God set up this idea of working together on plans as He accepted Adam’s input in naming all of the creatures of the earth (Gen. 2). Later, God and Abraham shared such depth of relationship with one another that God refused to hide from Abraham His plans for Sodom and even allowed Abraham to “tweak” His original plan for the city (Gen. 18). Even before that crucial discussion, building up to that point we see how the relationship between them grew over time with each sharing their hearts and thoughts and ultimately, revealing their plans to one another and working together toward what was being built and established.

I believe that God invites us into a relationship that includes a partnership with Him – one in which we listen to one another, trust each other, and have such depth of relationship that we can plan together, with the Master welcoming the input of the layman. We were created to have relationship with Him and work alongside of Him, bringing heaven to earth in the most natural ways.

I think this sense of restlessness, dissatisfaction and regret  come from our timing not being the same as His, coupled with our inability to see the final plans in their entirety. I remember not long after I got married my parents were building a new home. I was devastated to have “lost” the home I was familiar with and I just couldn’t visualize what my dad was describing to me over the phone. Personally, I need to SEE things. I’m a visual learner. When things are described to me in an auditory manner, I often can’t translate that into a visual picture in my mind. It leaves me frustrated and, in the case of this new home that would never feel like “my” home, it just made me cry. I couldn’t see beyond this sense of feeling lost, adrift, and even abandoned in a way, despite the fact that I had begun a new adult life with my husband. Life was changing and not only did it seem like I had no say in it, I couldn’t see ahead to the plans for the future. I wanted answers NOW. I wanted to know not only the immediate next steps, I wanted to know all of the ones that were to come and how that was all going to turn out in the end.

Right now, Bri and I have ideas of what we want the plans to be for the future. We see some drawings on the table and are working with our Architect, but we want to not only get moving on the designs, we want to be living in the finished project and enjoying it for years to come. As I type this, I’m thinking that part of this is learning to actually enjoy the process, rather than chafe against it. It’s also about letting that relationship between Master and layman continue to grow and enjoying that, as well. I believe God is inviting us to have those conversations with Him that change His mind and alter His plans, but in a way that still accomplishes His ultimate goal through the process of give and take. He gave us free will with a purpose and invites us to surrender it to Him. We can do that knowing that He is a good Father who loves us deeply and only has the best plans in mind.