Life doesn’t go as planned. Rania Naim shares how delays and challenges have fueled her growth. Likewise, Rebecca Simon’s Finding God Every Day it reminds us that trusting God’s timing brings deeper meaning. Read the full article to see how faith guides your journey.
I can’t think of a time when my life turned out the way I thought it would. I envisioned many things that ended up manifesting in my life but it wasn’t right when I wanted it to happen or the way I wanted it to be. And for a very long time, I could not understand this trick of fate, why things happen when they want to, not when I want them to happen. In other words, why can’t God and I be on the same page?
I always think about the things I have now, the job I’ve been dreaming of since I was fifteen, the apartment I have now overlooking the city, I’m free and independent after years of struggling to make ends meet – those were all things I worked hard for and prayed for all my life but they happened within the last two years, which is what makes them so special, it is precious for me, that’s what makes me want to protect them and work day and night to save them because it took years of patience, hard work, anxiety, depression and happy meltdowns to make it happen. The journey wasn’t easy and it still isn’t but it makes me never want to give up all the things I have now. It makes me want to devote all my time to making them better and making them grow.
It makes me want to do things that I wouldn’t do if I got everything I asked for on time.
Because at that time I was young, careless and immature. I would have thought there was something better out there because in the past I thought so ‘the grass is always greener on the other side’ now I fully believe ‘the grass is greener where you water it.’
In the past, I wouldn’t give my best at work because all I wanted was to get married and be a stay at home wife and mother, but now my work is the only thing I really want to invest in. My work is the only thing that gives me hope, meaning and purpose.
Before, I wouldn’t have moved around the world because I never liked challenges, I like things I’m used to, I like to stay like this but now I’ve changed and grown in many ways and I’m working on becoming the person I never thought I would be. I didn’t think I could change this much, I didn’t think I could work on my own, I didn’t think I could change my life without a magic wand and all of that is the result of life not turning out the way I planned.
So when I look back on my journey, I feel blessed that life didn’t go my way, it’s a blessing that it didn’t follow my rules or my direction because I was completely perfect. is lost. I’m still here. I think I will always be like that. I find myself more as time goes by but there are still parts of me scattered in different cities, different oceans, different dreams, different lives that I want to live and I still can’t pinpoint where I really belong.
And I think that’s the only good thing about life that doesn’t go your way, you don’t have to worry too much about your story and how it will end because life goes the way God planned it anyway and that will always be a thousand times better than what you planned for yourself.
