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What's the Plan? by Jessica Sheets OK ladies, I've been inspired...by my 17-year-old sister. She probably won't feel like the source of inspiration, especially if I make her read this. She will most likely roll her eyes and say something like, "Oh, my goodness," that's how she typically responds when her 31-year-old sister has advice for her. Anyway, we live right down the road from my family (don't judge me...it works for us), so I get to see lots of teenage drama. As I am reminded of all the issues that a 17-year-old girl faces, I wish I could say that they are unique to this generation, and that my friends and I never acted like that. While things have certainly changed a lot since I was in high school and college, the basic issues are the same as they have been since the dawn of time. And so I want to address how you survive as an emotionally driven female. No, I want to go beyond surviving. I want us to think about how to let God be all that He is and triumph over the issues that are tearing down young girls and women every day. This is all still forming in my head, so I'm not sure what all we should talk about. I may end up with just a couple of articles, or maybe I'll still be writing when the next generation reads this and thinks I'm way too old to have any insight into the topic. But I know we will talk about self-esteem, our identity in Christ, how to deal with our friends, and boys, boys, boys! There is one thing that I want to begin with, and you will hear it throughout anything you ever read of mine, regardless the topic. It is the fact that God has an incredible plan for your life! I know that the issues you face are huge to you right now. And you are all at a point in life that is very important. You are choosing careers (and mates) that will last the rest of your life...at least we certainly hope the mates will, even if the careers change. You are also getting your first taste of the "real world," and you may be discovering that things are a lot scarier than they were when you were shielded by mom and dad. You may even have some well-meaning people in your life right now telling you how you need to stay "on your knees and in the Word," because you don't want to make the wrong choices. Of course we do want to grow in our walk with God, and we don't want to make bad choices only to end up with the natural consequences that follow. However, let me say again...God has an incredible plan for your life! Though you aren't big enough to mess that up, you definitely can miss out on blessings along the way, and maybe even take a few side roads getting to the ultimate destination. But if we are truly seeking Him and wanting to find out what His plan for us is, I don't believe He will let us miss out on His plan. The main thing that we have to understand about God's plan is that it is a lot bigger than what we see. It's likely that a lot of you right now just want to make it out of college, find your husband, have a good career and nice family, and a "normal" life. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. But God's imagination is so much bigger than ours. I want to encourage you to maybe loosen your grip on your plans (they say telling God your plans is the best way to make Him laugh). Open up to the possibility that God has so much more in store for us than we could ever imagine...and then maybe that will help us (myself included) realize that the things we worry about right now will... 1) be worked out according to His plan, and 2) probably don't matter as much as we think they do. Let me leave you with this verse...it is one of my all-time favorites, and one I used at my wedding: "Glory be to Him who, by His mighty work with us, is able to do far more than we would ever dare to ask or dream of, infinitely beyond our wildest thoughts, prayers, desires, or hopes (Eph. 3:20, The Living Bible)." Until next time...