Rachel Whisman

At the end of May 2019, I graduated college. I also created a five-year plan. It included relational, financial, and other goals—five years to accomplish them and get them done. I was determined that I was going to achieve them by the end of 2024. My face was set and year after year passed and to my amazement, I did not achieve a single one. My five-year plan ‘twas in the dumpster and burning in all its lack of glory. My plans had failed even though they were, in my eyes, from good intentions. They seemed reasonable and perfectly fine. My pride took a hit, why did it not work out? Yet, looking back over the past couple of years I think the Lord in His kindness was undoing what I had tried to force. He was unraveling what I was trying to sew into completion. 

Now it is January 2025. I have no five-year plan and it honestly seems a little scary at times. I prefer order, tangible direction, someone who initiates, and foresight. I have none of that if my 23-year-old self was talking. What God took 5 years to decimate, and obliterate He redeemed it. I do have order, but it is not my own but from the authority of God and His word (Psalm 19:7-12). He sets before me what is pleasing before Him and what leads to destruction. I do have a gold-mind of tangible direction as I hold firmly to His word and by His grace, obey what He calls me to do for the day. Someone who initiates. I have plenty as I walk by His word and rest in His guidance as He leads me. To Where? I don’t know, but I know that He will be with me and I will lack nothing (Psalm 23:1). Foresight, yes, but in the humility that God is all-wise and knows everything, and “the secrets things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law” (Deuteronomy 29:29). I have the foresight in the sense that by faith I trust Him and He is good. His undoing of all my plans led me to trust in Him even more as my Father. 

In artsy fartsy language, it is as if I set out on a trail in May of 2019 that lasted for five years. The trail was rugged, beautiful, strenuous in multiple sections throughout, with high elevation gains, annoyingly confusing at times, and filled with detours, and after five years I have arrived at a plain. It is dull in the sense compared to what I just went through and saw, but refreshingly calm, steady, and tranquil. I could have a tantrum and be annoyed with the lack of thrill or I could respond in praise and adoration to Jesus as He has led me every step of the way. Of course, this could all be a mirage and what is before me is a lot more challenging. Yet, I will, by God’s grace, not dwell on what I do not know as Psalm 37:8 instructs us, “fret not yourselves, it tends only to evil.” and take comfort in Isaiah 43-12, “I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you.”

God, in His love, has led me to cry out in trust, “Lord, what do you want? Not my will, but yours be done.” I pray this not as a sigh in reluctantly giving up, but in a heart-filled-willing submission to my King, my Father, my Lord, and Savior Jesus Christ. It took five years and may He do with me as He best pleases for His agenda and not my own.  

Lord, I am willing
To receive what You give.
To lack what You withhold.
To relinquish what You take,
To suffer what You inflict,
To be what you require.

-Jerry Bridges

“The Lord is my portion says my soul, therefor I will hope in Him.

The Lord is good to those who wait for Him, to the soul who seeks Him.

It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.

It is good for a man that he bear his yoke in his youth.”

-Lamentations 3:24-27