Life as a first draft.

Photo by:  Ben white

"Life is a wild and unpredictable first draft." 


I heard this recently in a video we were watching at a moms group that I attend.  I loved it.  It got me thinking about life, especially my life lately.

My life up until now has been somewhat predictable.  I grew up in a small town, finished High School and went on to college and graduate school.  I worked in Youth Ministry for 15 years.  I got married and had two children.

I had achieved pretty much everything I had set out to achieve when I was 18 or so.  Don't get me wrong, it wasn't easy by any means.  I had many struggles and set-backs along the way.  But I got there.  I felt as though I had written a chapter.

And now, here I am at age 38, facing down the empty page.  Staring at it, wondering what it will contain.  In the year since I retired from ministry, I stayed home with my children, taught a class on writing your life story, wrote a curriculum series and became a substitute teacher.  I never thought I'd do any of those things.  But I did.

My life lately is less of a daily, predictable slog of the typewriter.  It's more of a wild ride with an IPad in tow; writing the story as I go.  And isn't that life really?  It's not predictable.  Especially life as a follower of a wild and unpredictable God.  Life is about discerning our mini callings and life callings.  Seeking them and living them out.  Life is trying something, failing and trying something new.

Right now, I couldn't write one of those essays on "Where I will be in Five Years."  I don't know.  I honestly don't.  I'm discerning, creating, living, loving and seeking out my next callings from the Lord.   There's something exciting about that.  There's definitely something to having a plan and sticking to it, but there's also a grand adventure in the daily revelation of God's grace as he leads me.  He's writing that wild first draft and I'm along for the ride.