Plans for good

In less than an hour, I will be leaving to take my first college classes. When people ask me if I'm nervous or excited, I don't know what to tell them. Of course I'm nervous! I've never been to school before, much less college. It would be just like me to mess up, and go to the wrong classroom. Or drop my backpack down the stairs. But then there are other times when I'm excited to try something new. Inevitably, though, the voice in my head comes back. Who do you think you are, Katie? What if you're not smart enough. What if you fail? Remember the time you tried to pay for ice cream with your library card? You're such a klutz. At this point in the one-way conversation, I usually scowl and tell the voice to shut up. But it doesn't work. I have to replace those self-centered, worrying thoughts with trust in the goodness and love of God. One of my favorite verses is Jeremiah 29:11, which says, "For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope." Maybe it's God's plan for me to drop my backpack down the stairs. Maybe failing is the only thing that will crush my pride to the point where I realize that I can't pull myself up by my shoelaces. God controls the future, and I'm sure glad I don't! 

"For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, [nor tests, nor clumsiness, nor confusion,] nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." Romans 8:38-39