|
When I was a Christian before, before I fell into doubt and fear and anger and before my worldview was shaped by the world itself and not the candy coated idea that I wanted the world to be, I used to thank that God had a step by step plan as to how my life would be and turn out. I believed he knew what I would do for a living and who I would marry and all of these intricate details of my life and not only mine but everyone else. I believed that God marked our steps in life before we took them but then things started happening at random and it felt chaotic and there just seemed no way that it could’ve been planned by anyone.
I remember when the first person I knew had a successful suicide. I didn’t know her as well as I wanted but she was this sweet and smiling short Hispanic girl named Kandace who I really wished I could have known better. She sat next to me in math class and we’d talk briefly, never in great detail she’d always ask what I had going on and because I wasn’t popular I didn’t have much to say. Then I remember we started laughing about that beggin strips commercial that was on all the time in the 90′s. The one with the dog that was always talking about bacon. “There’s only one thing that smells like Bacon AND THAT’S BACON!!!!!” We’d take turns doing the voice before or after class and laugh. I remember seeing her one last time before I left Farmington at the pizza hut she worked at cause I went in to eat the lunch buffet. She gave me a slip of paper with her address on it and asked me to write and I promised I would, even though I knew I was horrible at correspondence. I remember her and these little details about the personality that she presented to me what I didn’t know was the details about her abusive father and checked out mother. I didn’t know that the only real friends she had got her all the crank(meth) she could ingest for free. And as she handed me that slip of paper that summer I didn’t know in a few short months she would shut herself in her father closet with her fathers gun and take her own life. God had a plan for her life?
I remember Amanda I remember meeting her at TEC Teens Encounter Christ, I remember she had major depression and I remember she was addicted to cigarettes, But I also remember she had a heart on fire for Jesus and she had an unwavering faith in him. I remember long phone conversations and letters with her and we would encourage each other to be strong in our individual trials. I remember how she’d hug too, She give the longest tightest hugs and they always made you feel like you were cared for more than you deserved to be. It was really exciting cause at the time we met she lived in Los Alamos and I lived in Farmington and that was a long ways away but soon we’d both be moving to Colorado. We were both really excited about being within 30 min drive of each other so we could do fun things like going to coffee and hanging out and studying the bible and things that Teen Christians do. I also remember the day she called me and told me she could not talk to myself or my brother anymore and I remember the day my brother tried calling her and then her father calling my father and telling us to not contact her. I didn’t know why back then and I remember how I felt hurt and betrayed by this.
I remember aspects of her personality that she showed me and those letters and phone calls and times we hung out at teen retreats what I didn’t know about was her addiction to heroin. I didn’t know that she would die the same day as my brother from an OD, I wrote her letters at the only email I had for her in 2002 which she would never get cause she was dead. I didn’t know she was dead until 2005. God’s plan?
I could share many stories just like these, stories that shook my faith not only in the idea of God’s perfect induvidual plan for me but also shook my faith in a God at all.
My friend Dina Kucera is a writer, and in her book she talks about this idea which she called Divine Order and her thoughts are that God’s plan for your life is something to try to live up to but because we are human we screw it up. Not only for ourselves but for others as well.
I look at it a bit different than Dina. I love God and I believe in him but I have doubt about whether or not he has a plan for our life. I also have deep doubt about God’s foreknowledge, I don’t think God see’s everything before it happens, and the idea of God not having foreknowledge doesn’t lessen his holiness at all in my eyes. I don;t think God sat down and wrote the story of my life before I was born and knew how it would end p, nor do I even think he wrote an outline that he hopes that we can aspire too as long as we don’t get in our own way or each others way. I think God has an idea for who we could be and what we could bring to the world, he creates us like a painting like a song, gives us our own voice and some talents that we can use and sends us off into a world where nothing is guaranteed and life gets messy.
I think Kandace’s plan, Amanda’s plan was the same as all of our plans. Survive as long as you can, love as many as you can and leave the place a little better than it was when you came in. I disagree with many people on this I know but I don’t think the end of the story has been written, neither individually nor collectively. I think we are working with God to write it as we go and that was the plan all along. If you don’t get married to that girl, or if you don’t get that job or if you end up puking your guts out while dying of heroin I don’t think it’s because God planned it that way or that you failed to live up to the plan that God hoped for, or even that something got in the way to interfere with god’s plan. I think that God’s plan for us is to give us certain tools and let us free into the garden to play. Ultimately, collectively I believe God’s plan to be about redemption and restoration but beyond that, as my wife would say, life is a choose your own adventure book.
,,,,,,and I think I am ok with that. | 
