"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
I have always been a firm believer that God has a plan for my life. That plan may or may not be what I imagined but will serve God's purpose. God knows what I want/need long before I do.
One of my favorite examples of God's plan being better than my own happened in my Senior year of college. I was in desperate need of a job to continue on at N.Y.U. as my full financial aid and additional academic scholarship just barely covered my tuition, leaving nothing for books, transit, food, and other expenses. The previous year I had used up the maximum amount of hours tutoring for America Reads, so that I couldn't continue that as my source of income. I hoped to find assistant teaching, tutoring, babysitting, or similar position related to my elementary education major but my search turned up zero nearby jobs available in those fields.
So, I poured my heart out to God and begged him to help me find a job, any job, that would allow me to continue my senior year. I removed the teaching/tutoring/babysitting skills from my resume and added instead the tasks I had performed for my dad, an accountant, when helping him in his home office. I applied for every entry level data entry, phone answering, secretary, and executive assistant position I could find and waited for any of them to give me a call back.
The few calls I received weren't interested in a student who didn't yet have her degree and suggested I reapply after I graduated. I was out of ideas for where else to apply when I received one last call. The caller told me "I don't think you are quite right for this (accounting assistant) position but my wife is looking for a sitter for our girls. Would you consider interviewing for that?" I immediately agreed and I was hired the very next day at the interview with them. The position was a steady, long term babysitting position that covered my expenses and left a little extra for the occasional movie. I continued on with them for years (until the girls were in school full time). Those 2 little girls were 20 months apart, the exact age difference as my nieces born 10 years later.
God knew not only what would help me in the short term but what the future would hold and he prepared me for it. He granted me a job which covered my expenses and used the skills I was devolving as a teacher. He prepped me 10 years in advance to be an aunt to my nieces and know how to have fun with then while meeting all of their needs.
