Robert Burns wrote that “The best-laid schemes o’ mice an ‘men / Gang aft agley.” Often we get frustrated when things don’t go the way we want them to, especially when we perceive that we are tripped up by our own faults and shortcomings. But sometimes when our plans go awry, it is precisely because God has a different idea.
Sometimes it is exactly those little foibles which God wants of us.
I have this unfortunate, insomniac drive and I love to stay up all night working on something then sleep through the odd hours of the day. It isn�t that I don�t love daylight, I very much do, but I have so much more energy at night.
I broke myself of this habit recently. I was really proud of myself: most days I was getting up even before Mandy, waking up even before the sun, and I have been staying awake through the day, and get this, actually sleeping at night. Yay me! This is a highly unusual state of affairs.
But it turned out that my odd sleeping habits were exactly what God wanted last night.
My sister, the incurable insomniac night-owl college student, recently recounted the inspiring story of a late-night encounter outside her apartment and how she was providentially in the right place at the right time. Read the whole story here
Jen had a similar story on her blog this past week as well. I thought the two made a nice pair:
I was stuck in this mentality that since I’d screwed everything up by being late and getting a bad map and getting lost, I was on my own; God’s will would have been for me to not screw up in the first place, and now it was up to me to figure it out. Luckily, I was able to pull out of my anxious rut long enough to remember that that was not the case. God has a will for us at every moment, even when we get ourselves in bad situations. I realized that it wasn’t too late—it’s never too late—to turn to him and humbly seek his will. So that’s what I did. I made the choice to let go of my anxiety, to trust that God guide me down the right path. I decided to pull over to pray and think, so I turned down a dark side street.
As I was slowing down to park, a bright object caught my eye: a shining statue of Our Lady.
Discover what happened next here.
