It Becomes an Act of Faith

If you're not already familiar with my story, the long and short of it is a story of working toward goals that always end up just out of reach.  I know it's been used a lot, but the illustration of the mouse in a maze works perfectly here.  I trained to be a dancer, with all the blood, sweat, and tears that come with that aspiration.  I dreamed of being a drug- and tobacco-free dancer in the midst of an artists' world that can be very, very dark and full of abnormal ways to find comfort. I vowed that I would be the dancer that would bring the light of Christ into this darkness, and be a role model for the younger dancers at the same time.  But that was not what I was called to do.  A back injury incurred while waiting tables eventually landed me in a wheelchair, with no hope of my mangled spinal column being able to support my body's weight again.
So, my young husband joined the Marine Corps in an effort to take care of my medical needs, only to be sectioned-out on account of asthma.
I figured I’d go to school and become a therapist, to help other injured athletes.
"What do you mean we're moving to Montana?!  I thought we were going to Minneapolis!"
“I’m sorry, but unless you commit to a year's worth of hormone therapy, there's no chance you'll have any more children." 
Ok. So I’ll become a teacher and love everybody else's children…
It's been like this for nearly all of our 22 years of marriage. Every good intention, best-laid plan, and desperate execution of plan "B" has run into walls, and each time we have merely picked ourselves up and gone a different direction.  It took me a long time to learn that if I simply spend my time looking for another way to make my plan work, I miss the journey.  I don't mean just stop-and-smell-the-roses kind of missing the journey.  I mean missing the lessons that unfold along the way; about who God really is, and what it means to look for His way.  It becomes an act of faith to rest in the belief that God knows where you’re going.  When you realize that all those moments, even the moments on the way to where you’re going, can be full of growth, and that just because we aren’t where we want to be doesn’t mean we can’t be content.  That’s the place I’d rather be, because every other path leads to frustration.