Time Traveler's Wife...

Ok, went to the movies tonight with my mother and her neighbor to see The Time Traveler's Wife. I had been wanting to see it for a while now. I love her and I totally bought their on screen chemistry.

Let me just say for the record...not what I was expecting. Still bawled like a baby in several parts but a little far out there.

It of course got me to thinking...scary, I know. Bear with me. After seeing the movie I am incredibly thankful that we don't know our entire life story or even bits of it before we walk through it. I for one could not have handled near what I have had I known it prior to experiencing it...do you follow? I mean the Lord has it perfectly designed and there just is no coincidence - it is because it is supposed to be. For instance, we endure hardships, loss, trials for a reason. Sometimes it is because the Lord will use you to help another walk through the same circumstance. Other times it is to prepare you for something bigger. In order to stretch you and not to tear you in two while enduring it. I love that. I mean to truly contemplate that my life...your life, has been planned before we were ever even born. He has a beautiful plan for each of us. Chew on that for a little while. Intense, huh? I can only imagine had the Lord told me what, when, how and why that I would go running for the hills.

For instance at 16 if He said....
When you are 20 you will be married to a boy whom you have never dated, rarely spoken to and never even pictured as a possible boyfriend...and you will be madly in love. After a year of marriage your husband will be in a horrible car wreck and escape...unharmed, 3 hours from where you live after a big fight. You will have a couple of rocky years and both of you will be so consumed by the world that you will lose sight of who I am. At almost 23 you will give birth to your handsome son, who will come early and be very ill and stay in the hospital for 9 long weeks after several surgeries. Six months later you conceive your 2nd child, a beautiful daughter. (I am going to speed this up for the sake of not boring you all to death). You will move 9 more times either temporary or for years at a time. 9 times!!! This alone would send me for some type of sedation considering my least favorite thing to do is to pack and move and unpack. You will find THE church. You will encounter real people, really living to love and serve Me. Oh, and your husband, he falls madly in love with Me, consumed with Me and becomes a pastor. Me...uh, a pastor's wife...I don't think so! Not that there is anything wrong with being a pastor's wife :) You will adopt a gorgeous baby girl born in China. You move back to the hometown you both thought you'd never return to. And 2 years later you will return to China to adopt the most adorable and precious little toddler ever! At 16 I was thinking purely of myself. Four children...this could have flipped my lid. I was planning on being married, have the 2 kids, boy then girl, work full time, keep up with the Jone's...oh, you so know the drill. Which brings me to today...had I known even a smidgen of what might have come...I would have worried about the rocky relationship, premature baby, moving, living up to the pastor's wife persona (in my head alone), well, all of it. It could have literally driven me crazy. Or I could have tried hard to change somethings which would in fact, change EVERYTHING.

You know what gets me? The Lord knew of it all along...all of it. And he knew what I could and could not handle. He has used our rocky relationship to help counsel other young married couples. He has used our premature baby to allow us to minister to other families experiencing the same. He has given us trials to produce perseverance which builds our character...well it is better said here:

Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us. Romans 5: 3-5

Which makes me intensely excited...not knowing what is coming...what He is preparing us for...what He is leading us through...what He has in store for us. What trials or suffering the Lord has for us to endure that we may persevere and build our character to make more of Him and less of us. He has our lives mapped out, to glorify Him. We just have to be open to the fact that He loves that much. He loves us so much that He will do what is necessary to make us in the likeness of Himself. Which again, I totally dig. There is just no greater love. But, I am thankful I have no heads up on what is coming down the road...good, bad, happy, sad, high or low. Which brings me back to this:

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. Jeremiah 29:11

He is the only One who needs to know.