Not my plans

Sorry this is going to be long...

How often do we plan things out, but then they really never go the way we had planned? Or, we get so caught up in doing something else that we forget why we are there in the first place.

For the past week and a half I have been in Texas. I have been here trying to help one of my cousins through a tough break up. When I got here I was so excited. I got to spend some time away from home (which was good news for me), I got to see my two of my cousins and my aunt and uncle who I had not seen in almost two years, I got to spend some time in the sunshine, what could be better right? Now for almost a month I have been talking to my cousin over the phone about her break up. I knew that things for her were bad, but I didn't know just HOW bad they were. When I got here I realized how truly heartbroken she was. There are so many places that we can't go to or things that we can't do because it reminds her of her ex boyfriend. She calls and talks to his mom and his sister trying to figure out why he would do such things or when he is going to come crawling back to her. She sends him text after text asking him why he is doing this and what did she do wrong? She gets very little sleep and there are only a few things she can eat (let me just say we have had more Chick-Fil-A in the past 9 days than anyone should have). It has been really heartbreaking for me to see her like this. She is not the same amazing cousin I have known and looked up to my entire life, and this is the first time I have been able to see her as just as broken as me.

I had all of these plans when I came down here. For one, I was only going to be here for 6 days. She had mentioned some things that she wanted to do such as go to the zoo and go putt-putt golfing and do some shopping. So I had these days planned out and was all excited, I even thought of conversations I would like to have with her. I didn't expect that she would be afraid of driving some of the places she wanted to go, or that she would have all of these things that she "can't do" because they hold memories for her. It was hard to even bring up things from Michigan because she took a couple of trips to Michigan with him. So after we did all of the things that she wanted to do or all the things that we could do, in the 6 days that I was supposed to be here, she decided that I couldn't leave yet and paid extra money for me to change my plane ticket to leave a week later. I had no idea why but I knew that I needed to stay another week. The next day I found out why. I can't really go into details but what happened left me with a very sad, very tired, quite drunk cousin. She didn't sleep much that night. I awoke to her crying at about 2 in the morning and I sat with her telling her that she is worth more than everything that this guy was doing to her. She didn't really know what I was telling her. As we sat there she asked me to read to her from Pslams. I was kind of caught off guard, I had forgotten why I was here. I had focused on keeping her occupied, not speaking truth into the lies. I had focused on trying to help her move on and becoming irritated when she wouldn't instead of showing her that God's love can overcome all and can help her through. It was a moment of refocus for me. It was what i needed to remember why I was here in the first place.

So as I sat there reading things to her from Psalms I was just glad to be able to show her how no matter her circumstances God can be her refuge and her strength when she feels she has none left. My heart was once again breaking for her, but from a different perspective this time. My heart was breaking the way that God has taught my heart to break for people when His heart breaks for people who are hurting.

She asked me to read to her again the other night when she couldn't sleep again, she said that she couldn't tell anymore which thoughts in her head were true and which ones weren't. She couldn't tell what was in her head and what wasn't. So I read her many things that night, I couldn't stop, I was just speaking as much truth to her as I possibly could. All the while, it was reminding me that I am not in this alone, as I was trying to do it for the first half of my trip. My plans didn't necessarily go as I planned, but God knew what was going to happen. God knew how it was going to play out. I am here because this is how it needed to happen. It is so much easier to focus on other things than what God is trying to show you, but when you realize what God is trying to show you it makes things so much better.

Don't close yourself off to what God is trying to show you, even when you are trying to focus on helping someone else... instead focus on God and God will reveal himself to you and to the other person/people in his timing.

Be blessed today my friends!
-Amanda