This Isn't the Life I Ordered

“This isn’t the life I ordered.” I bet that’s what the diabetic says. Or the mom of a child with disabilites. I bet the spouse who sits in their home reading a note from the one they loved who has gone to love someone else wonders where their happy-ever-after has gone.

We are misled in a way. We are taught that if we are good, honest, moral, and right that life will often be safe and comfortable. It won’t hurt.

Yet the person who answers the phone to hear their teenager was killed in a car crash knows they didn’t order that kind of a story. And the grandparent who is taking over guardianship of their grandkids because their child can’t be a parent in jail…they probably think – “this isn’t the life I ordered.”

I think it’s funny, in a way, how we think we can order our own lives. I mean – who gave us “boss-ship?” God orders our lives and He ordains our days. Satan does what he can in the meantime to trip and mess up our every step. And he does a good job of it.

Life is life. The good, the bad, the uphill and downhill. It has valleys and deserts. It has exhilarating joys and deep, deep pain. We can’t escape. We live, we breathe. We love and we hurt.

We can feel robbed about the things we didn’t order in our lives. Whatever those “things” may be. We’ve all been given something that wasn’t on the agenda. Or…we can make the most of our situations. We can look for the blessings, use the hurts to minister to others, or simply let the trial make us stronger and better.

I heard it said that if a tree doesn’t have wind, it won’t grow.  The same is true for our lives. If we don’t have adversity and hardship, we don’t grow. Our roots can’t get deeper or stronger.

This may not be the life we ordered but it’s the one that was given to us. It’s up to us to choose how to open that gift. For life IS a gift.

“For I surely know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm,  to give you a future with hope.”

Jeremiah 29:11