I'll Go Where You Want Me to Go

My husband and I had lived the life we thought we should, we had plans and hopes and had set up our life to be debt free for the rest of our life. But the Lord had other plans for us.

By the time we were this far in the process, my husband was working a job and he had one more semester left of school. He was doing testing and interviews on the weekends for the Highway Patrol. We didn’t see a whole lot of him. But we were sure things would work out as we planned. We had been obedient to the Lord and focused on what was important.

That assurance all came crashing down with one conversation. My husband received a phone call and was notified that he had been taken out of the running for the CHP. He had a polygraph test and there was a discrepancy in one of his answers (which he had answered honestly) and what was on his application. The discrepancy was not that his answer had changed though. It was that there was a difference of opinion on what the answer ment. It took Matthew a while to tell me exactly what happened and a simple phone call to his job he currently had would have fixed everything and the process would have continued. But the CHP refused to make that call.

How does that happen??? How does one difference of opinion mess up our whole future??? He was told that they loved him and wanted him to apply again and fix his application. We were about 6 months and $300 into this process now. They wanted him to apply AGAIN? Start EVERYTHING over???

I am going to be honest with you, I was not a happy camper at this point. I said to him (ok, maybe more then “said”…) “No way! We are not starting everything over and wasting more time on this.” I was so mad. How could they ruin our plans like that? What were we supposed to do? I had plans with how we would make our lives better and how we would have a “real” life. Dreams of the trips we would be making to see the world in the next 10 years. Dreams of our debt free life. These dreams were burst in a matter of minutes.

After a few days we realized that we have a family. We had little kids to think about that we needed to be going in a direction for them. We knew that we had 2 choices, figure out something else to do or re-apply and start it all over. Neither of these choices seemed really a great one. So we decided the best thing for us to do was pray. We began to pray that we would know what we should do. If we should move on or if we should start again and spend more time and money on his highway patrol pursuits.

I think there are times in all of our lives where we have choices like this. Neither choice is bad, but neither is what we wanted. This puts you in a very hard place. You are always questioning every move and wondering if you are doing things wrong.

I think these are the times where you begin to really look at yourself on the inside and the outside. To see where your priorities lie and how you will continue your life. You make pivotal decisions that change your life forever. These are the times we turn to The Lord for guidance and we are able to understand more of the plan he has for us.

This was that time in our lives. We were at a cross roads. I didn’t really see it t that point, but I really think that was a moment for us to see if we were going to seek the Lords guidence or we were going to do what WE wanted. My husband really wanted to join the highway patrol. He had worked hard to get through school so I would let him do it. I know that sounds crazy, but it was the only way I would feel comfortable with him doing it. He had to have something to fall back on if this thing had a bad outcome. But that was not what the Lord had planned for us. He had a higher purpose and we really had to let go of our own wants to be open to the spirit telling us what we needed to do.

We began to look for what the Lord had in store for us. It took quite a bit of time and prayer to really be ok with things, but we began to find the path he had for us. It was HARD to know what we should do because our own thoughts and opinions (read that as my opinions) kept getting in the way, but slowly the Lord opened our eyes and our minds to what he needed us to do.