I had a plan.

I really, really did have a plan when I was 17.

At first, I wasn’t sure if I was going to college, but once I was sure, I started making my plan.

I’m going to have a gap year to save up money for tuition, working my butt off at three different jobs, then go to university in Japan, study International Relations and Peace Studies, then move to South Korea and work at the embassy as a diplomat.

This was my plan. It seemed like such a great plan, and I was sure that, even though it was going to be challenging, I would have enough wiggle room in my plan to achieve each thing at my own pace (though I preferred it to all happen in six years or less. But, you know. Details, details…).

Never in a million years did I think college would be as hard as it was, to the extent that I seriously considered dropping out; nor did I imagine COVID happening, or that my family and I would end up moving back to Maui, Hawaii. I did not imagine settling back down in Maui as a more permanent home. Come back and visit, sure. Live here and work here? Maybe temporarily. But really, seriously stay here? Settle down and make friends and create a lifestyle for myself here? No way. Did not see that coming.

There is a saying: Man makes plans, and God laughs.

Well, I’m glad this has been entertaining for at least one of us.

In the past two years, I had to get over my disappointment and feelings of failure. I had to give up on dreams and goals I had set in the back of my mind since high school. Dreams that I rarely spoke aloud to anyone, but I had counted on being who I was. I had literally defined myself by those hopes and dreams, and all of them fell flat against reality. It was really devastating, and difficult to move past at first. I can’t say that I have totally given up on them, but I’ve learned that I shouldn’t get too fixated on my expectations of what I think my life should look like.

Basically, I’ve stopped trying to plan my whole life out. I’ve given up on that. It’s better to just believe that God has the plan for my life figured out, and it is good, because He is good. Now, it might not be what I thought of as good or successful, but that doesn’t make His plan for my life any less good. It just makes it different from my expectations, and I need to have a more open mind in how I approach His purpose for my life. And let me tell you, it’s way less stressful to just let things go, and work towards small achievements.

Now, none of this is to say that I don’t get frustrated sometimes. Like I said, I try and keep the fact that God has a purpose for my life in mind, but that’s relatively easy to do. Remembering that I won’t be reaching that purpose quickly or easily is much more difficult for me to bear.

But sometimes, it’s a good thing my plans and expectations don’t work out how I had imagined them. I learned so much more from bumbling through my life than I ever would if everything went exactly according to my plan. If life was smooth sailing, all the time, would I be able to tell the difference between joy and boredom? Would I value life the same if I always had everything I wanted?

I seriously doubt it.

My conclusion for life was simple: we are never fully in control of what goes on around us, and, although it doesn’t feel like it sometimes, we are richer for it. Since we experience difficult things anyway, might as well take what I learned, and if I come up against something similar in the future, remember the lesson and react appropriately.

One of the lessons I learned from all those mistakes and bad situations is the importance of standing up for myself. I’ve mentioned it dozens of times on this blog, but I’ll say it again: making boundaries and standing firm on those boundaries is really just vital to surviving in this world. I always had trouble with that growing up, I believed I was just an inconvenience to everyone and everything, so I would just suffer in silence. Even when I was being bullied, I didn’t really say anything but held all the words of others inside myself, and grew bitter as time went on. I was so silent, people often wondered if I had a voice. I grew more and more angry, and I felt sorry for myself, most of all. But it didn’t help me. I was always falling back into the same situations, and always walking away angrier than before. I chose to let it all go, to finally just live as myself and try not to worry whether or not people found me annoying or inconvenient. And I did hold onto one important lesson from those situations: I can demand respect for myself, and refuse to back down from that.

Ok, ok. You’re probably wondering, “What does all this have to do with plans, or how plans don’t work out?”

Giving up on plans we make for ourselves is not the same as giving up on living our life. Instead of defining ourselves by what we do or what we have, we have to learn to define ourselves based on who we were created to be. I don’t know if all my readers have the same beliefs as I, and that’s ok if they don’t, but I’m asking all of you to define and value yourself as someone unique and precious. Someone who isn’t tied to the summation of what they have or how they appear. People are so much more complicated than that.

Most of the time, the things that we didn’t plan for our lives teach us the most about life. We don’t plan to get hurt, we don’t plan out our struggles, but they happen anyway. Going through those challenging situations often shows us our flaws and insecurities; however, they also teach us about our strengths. I know it gets hard, when we’re in the middle of a mess, to remember we even have strengths. But we are all created with particular strengths: we were designed that way. It’s important to not get lost in the motions of life, and to not get stuck in the hopelessness of it all. What we are going through at the moment may not be what we planned for our lives, but that doesn’t mean we have to give up on the idea of living a great life. The moment we start to believe the hopelessness, we sink deeper and deeper into it, and it can be hard to find the surface again. We have to fight to find it again.

And it’s ok to get mad at life! Don’t think I’m saying you can never get frustrated. Hell, I’m struggling with my own impatience and frustrations while I’m writing this. I’ve had long conversations (arguments) with God, asking Him why the heck do I feel so behind everyone else. I may have handed over control of my plans to Him, but that doesn’t mean I’m always happy with how its all going.

But it’s important you don’t let yourself get stuck there. Let go, focus on the things you can do right now, and maybe give yourself little things to challenge while you’re waiting for your life to move again. If there are a thousand things going wrong in your life, try to focus on the one or two things going right. Little victories are still victories. Small battles can ultimately win the war, even if victory looks different from what we thought.

It’s almost impossible to guarantee an outcome we expect from our plans. Some aspects of that outcome may be similar to your real life, but it won’t be exactly what we imagined, because we are never fully in control of the world around us. Whether your world is wide or small, there will always be aspects you will miss or be at the mercy of. Your plans can be grand or they can be simple, it doesn’t matter.

The fact of life is: nobody will be perfect, and life itself will not be picture-perfect either.

We need to get used to the fact that life is messy, and it will always be messy, for everyone. We never totally have all our ducks in a row, we are never totally without our own concerns. Someone who looks like they have everything together and their life is going exactly the right way may be struggling internally with something they feel they can’t tell anyone. And that is partly because they feel they need to maintain a certain image for the sake of putting others at ease.

To be honest, I am sick and tired of our obsession with appearances. Not just physical appearance, or even any aspect of how we look. I am tired of how we feel we must show that we know exactly what we are doing at all times. Because, seriously, do any of us truly know what we are doing?

I often wonder if God chuckles to Himself when He sees us try so hard to prove everything is perfect and fine in our lives. Does he think we look silly? Because I certainly feel silly sometimes. I wonder why I care so much about what people think of me. I catch myself all the time trying to appear like someone ‘cool’ (a failed endeavor, every time) or confident. When the fact is, I constantly feel unsure in 85% of the things I do (the other 15% is when I have confidence even though I have absolutely no reason to). Nobody can have a perfect life, or be perfectly in control of their life.

That’s why, when I feel particularly insecure, I have to check myself. Why do I feel insecure? Is it because I’m actually doing something wrong? Or is it because I’m worried other people might perceive I am doing something wrong? Do I feel insecure because of a crack in my character, or because of a crack in my image?

If you read one of my earlier blogs, I talk about broken cups, and the Japanese tradition of mending them with gold. My brokenness and imperfectness cannot be mended by me, only God can mend it and make it beautiful. I shouldn’t worry about how those cracks appear to anyone else, I shouldn’t become anxious because someone points out my flaws and says that the gold doesn’t take away the fact that I have made mistakes, because we are all imperfect. God uses those imperfections to show His glory, he uses my weaknesses to show his strength. Every roundabout, messy journey I’ve taken is now a story I can tell other people to show them life’s beauty and success is not found in the plans we make for ourselves, but in the victories of battles we never imagined ourselves fighting.

All these things that I never planned for my life led up to right now, and I’m a person I never expected myself to be, used for purposes I never expected to be used for. It’s just further proof that we as people do not know everything about life, and it’s impossible for us to control it.

So let’s stop trying to appear perfect and in control, and focus instead on doing what we can. Have hope in the fact that life isn’t over when difficult situations arise; life continues until, and after, we overcome those challenges. Have hope in the victories we have won, and will continue win, in the smallest and biggest things of our lives. And laugh at the plans we made in life, instead of regretting that we couldn’t do them. God laughs at those plans because we do not plan our growth in a realistic way. He laughs because our imagination cannot possibly touch the scope of His ultimate purpose for us. We may plan to be great people, but He’s the one who uses us to touch the lives of people we never saw ourselves meeting. He laughs because He knows all of our shortcomings and weaknesses, and He knows exactly how to use them to show how much He loves us, but also how much He loves others.

Our broken plans and small successes are not tools that should be used against us, but instead should be examples of how far we’ve come in life from where we started. And I hope, just like me, my readers can laugh at life a little more, and not become stuck in the frustration of not being where they thought they’d be. Life happens in unexpected moments, and that’s what makes it beautiful.