Writing In Pencil

In their hearts humans plan their course, but the LORD establishes their steps.

—Proverbs 16:9

I should have written in pencil. I should have viewed the trajectory of my life as a mystery. I should have planned lightly, hypothetically, and used words like “maybe” and “possibly.” Instead, every chance I got, I wrote in Sharpie. I stood on my future, on what I knew, on the certainty of what life would hold for me, as though it were rock. Instead, it’s more like a magic carpet, a slippy-slidy-wiggly thing, full of equal parts play and terror. The ground beneath my feet is lurching and breaking, and making way for an entirely new thing every time I look down, surprised once again by a future I couldn’t have predicted.

I’m going to start writing in pencil.

Life with God at its core is about giving your life up to something bigger and more powerful. It’s saying at every turn that God knows better than we know, that his Spirit will lead us in ways that we couldn’t have predicted. I have known that, but I haven’t really lived that.

There is a loosey-goosey feeling to the future now, both a slight edge of anxiety like anything can happen, and a slight bubble of hope and freedom that, well, anything can happen.