I HAVE A DREAM

I'm a planner. And a tad crazy.

At the age of 17, I wrote out a 10 year plan for my life. For the past few years, I've been motivated by this dream plan of who I was going to be and the life I was going to lead.

As big, daunting, adult decisions have come my way, I've been prompted to walk a surprising path. And as that path has gotten better and better, a hidden part of me was sad that I kept drifting further from that plan.  But just like my plan, my perspective changed too.

While walking around DC this weekend, Heavenly Father showed me that as the planned direction of my life has changed, my dreams of who I want to be are changing with it.

So what if I'm not going to be the woman my 17-year-old self wanted me to be?

I'm going to be someone better, someone happier, someone that is more of who God intended me to be.

I just didn't know how to get there when I was 17.

You see, God's molding me to become what will make me happiest. My 17-year-old self could only grasp a bit of what would make me happy. Now, my 21-year-old self can grasp a bit more, but not enough. True happiness requires trusting promptings from the Spirit, no matter the changes that come with it.

Imagine if we were stuck with being who we wanted to be at 6 years old? Let me tell you...I'm no Pocahontas mommy-artist, but in first grade I sure thought it would make me happier than anything else in the whole world. Was my 6-year-old self wrong? No, not then. But if I stayed stubborn and stuck in my funny and naive little kid ways, I would have missed changing to find what actually makes me happiest. (Not to mention I'd probably feel a bit foolish telling people my job title.)

I love that a happy life always comes back to remembering the basics. Heavenly Father loves us. He has a divine plan of perfect happiness. We just need to exercise a little bit of faith in Him because He really does know what is best. He's teaching me to trust that plan and I've never been happier. Now that's a dream come true.