God's Perfect Plan

This week marks the end of a very long journey for me as I finish the credential program I started a year and a half ago. Looking back I remember many times thinking this day would "never" come and now I can't believe it's here, and that it came so quickly. I can't help but reflect on why God had me go through this program, and more importantly what He taught me and how He grew me through it.

From the time I was able to write I became a "teacher". I can remember vividly the countless hours I spent playing school making seating charts, tests, and assigning homework. I couldn't wait for the day I would grow up and have a real classroom. The only thing I ever wanted to be more than a teacher was a wife and a mom. All those years of hopeful anticipation led me to pursuing my teaching degree in college where God threw a wrench in "my" plans and shifted my pursuit. For the first time in my life I no longer knew teaching was my calling and was asked to submit that desire to the sovereign plan of my Maker. I remember wondering why but none the less teaching was no longer the calling I was pursuing.

Time went on and I graduated college unsure of what I was supposed to do and fully broken as I waited on God's prompting and direction. Six months went by and nothing. Was He listening I remember. Psalm 46:10 became the constant prayer of my heart as I preached trust and hope daily to myself. Would I believe God had a plan, that I hadn't messed up, and that He was good? Those six months were some of the most trying, stretching, and blessed of my life to that point.

Then, in His providence, a door was reopened and the desire I had to teach returned, and this time it was as psalm 37:4 says, a desire HE had placed. God began blessing me abundantly at that point and taking me on a journey for the next almost two years that has blown my mind, my dreams, my imagination.

All that to say, here I stand, finishing up what God started and about to enter a new season yet again. I am amazed at how the lord has grown me through this time. It has been far more of teaching me than teaching others. I have seen sin I possess in a new way, and weaknesses I so badly pray I will overcome. I have found that my strength must always come from the Lord and His joy must radiate from me daily. I have failed and succeeded and yet I have come to see God's grace in a whole new light. I am desperate for it...each and every day.

Teaching may have been the profession I thought God had called me to, but instead it became the tool that started a process of sanctification to rid me of selfish pride and lead me to a pursuit of selfless humility. I have seen how much more I need to be like Jesus and of course how much I must depend on Him for that molding.

So I stand a teacher, a journey only God could have planned, and yet in HIS perfect timing. I find myself amazed that through the reworking of "my" plans and dreams and the realizing more and more my dependence on Him I have found myself more at peace and more blessed than ever before. He gives and He takes...blessed be His name.

And in less than two months the calling in which He has used everything I have went through, especially teaching, to prepare me for will become a reality. I will become Mrs. Keith Bence and begin a new role as a wife and lord willing mother one day. I pray that as I have seen Him do immeasurably more than i could ask or imagine, that I would continue trusting His plan, provision and grace to enable me. I couldn't be more excited! One chapter closes and another opens. All the glory be to Him, my Jesus, my King, my Savior, my everything!