Planner/ Dreamer

My Mema gave me a new planner for 2014. It's the "Our Daily Bread" planner and I'm already in love with it. Each new month starts off with a beautiful photograph and a devotional blurb to prepare your heart for the coming days. Then there is a month overview with a verse for that month. Each week has space for a to do list and a shopping list plus plenty of space for each day's activities. And in the back of the planner is a schedule for reading through the bible in a year.

I love sitting down with a blank calendar and filling in the dates with travel plans and birthdays and wedding weekends and holidays. I love looking forward to a new year and anticipating all that could happen.

I have so many dreams about what 2014 could look like for me. I feel giddy with anticipation for an open year just waiting for plans to be made and hopefully a few adventures. I sat down with my calendar to start penciling in the things already filling up my schedule, the year already seeming shorter and smaller. Then I opened to January's devotional and I was hit hard by the first verse there on the page. And I had to put down my pens and highlighters and take a step back.

"If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that."  James 4:15

Lord willing.
Lord willing and the creek don't rise.

Not because I want something to happen this year or on this date. Not because I write it down in my planner and check off to do lists. Not because "if I dream it I can achieve it". Not because I scheduled it and planned for it and am ready. Not because I'm impatient (and Lord knows I am) and want things to happen now, on my timeline.

But because the Lord wills it.

It's okay to make plans. It's okay to ask God for big things this year. He knows my dreams, the desires of my heart. He hears my prayers and also hears what I don't even know to ask him for. So I can plan this year and dream my dreams with him in the center, and this year will unfold as He knows best. The pressure is off. The deadlines I set, the anxiousness I feel, all that disappears when I say "Lord willing", confident of His loving plan.