God’s Plan is great, but what about my dream plan? Kamryn Crowder, '23
As we dove deeper into the reading by Kate Bowler, Everything Happens for A Reason, and Other Lies I Have Loved on Oct. 5th at our Horizons Fellow dinner, I was surprised just how much I had subscribed to the idea that life with God meant that God would always follow my plan for my life and that my life would never fall off the tracks I had paved for myself. For most of my childhood, I had dreamed of the perfect life, which of course included the perfect job, perfect family, and perfect home. I always assumed that if I worked hard enough to achieve these things, God would bless the plans that I had laid out for Him. As Kate further described in her reading, cancer kind of threw a wrench in the faith that she procured in God and she hadn’t realized how much she had subscribed to some of the ideals in the prosperity gospel until she got cancer. As we further discussed this talk at our dinner, I thought about how much my own perspective of my life had been shaped by those ideals that God only wanted me to experience abundance and never suffer. As a child, I assumed there was no way that a perfect God would deny me such a perfect life, right? As a young adult now, I can definitively tell my younger self that I had it all wrong. The passing of my grandmother was nowhere near a part of the perfect life I had planned; neither was moving 18 hours away from everything I had ever known and grown up with to come to UVA. As my life has panned out, most everything that I have planned out has not gone according to that plan.
As we began to wrap up this conversation, we landed so ironically on the question of whether everything truly happened for a reason. At the time of the discussion and even after reading Kate’s testimonial, I was still sure that it did. However, as I have had more to reflect on this on my own, I’m not so sure of that definitive answer. Don’t get me wrong, I do believe God has a plan for everything and for all of our lives, but I do not believe that those plans include any harm, danger, or evil. As Jeremiah 29:11 says “For I know the plans I have for you…plans to prosper you and not to harm.” However, evil, bad, and harm do happen to people all the time. I am not sure how to answer that question and am at a crossroads about how to answer that question in my own life now. I am still not quite sure if the pain I and many others have experienced has a purpose or if everything happens for a reason yet, and maybe I will never get those questions answered on this side of heaven. However, I do know that God’s plan for me and all of us is to live a life full of purpose and not just comfort. So maybe a purposeful life will not end perfectly but I know that a purposeful life is better than a perfect one. A life of purpose entails having faith in a perfect God, and I’m learning that that is more than enough to sustain me.