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The other day my son was looking for both a Sharpie & a pencil. Both can be found on my desk – the Sharpie in one of my drawers & pencils on top of my desk usually in a baggie.

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Most of the pencils are small as I will keep using them until I can no longer hold them due to their smallness. And most no longer have erasers. Now mind you, it isn’t that I do not have a vast supply of pencils but I enjoy using pencils until they are used up. Looking at my baggie of pencils got me to thinking…..

I have tended to want to write my life with a Sharpie. I think there may be a name for it – “The Five Year Plan” or “Where I Want To Be In Ten Years” or “My Goals For Life”. And so I have planned:

  • wanting to go to college
  • land a good job
  • get married
  • buy a house
  • have a baby
  • maybe two babies
  • buy a new car
  • move to a bigger house

I won’t tell you how many I did or did not achieve & certainly not in the above listed order.

Life just does not cooperate with Sharpies.

Life tends to be written in pencil. And lately, I have concluded that I should be using pencils with huge erasers as life changes constantly. Perhaps that is why I have always preferred pencils to pens as my writing instrument of choice. Scripture puts it this way:

In his heart a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps. (Proverbs 16:9 NIV84)

I can make detailed plans, carefully weighing all the options or resort to a roll of the proverbial die but the reality is all the events of my life & circumstances are in God’s control. All. Of. It. Every day. I can plan but He directs. Even what seems to happen by chance, is not chance at all. It is all a part of His sovereign plan for my life.

I love the way Eugene Peterson words it:

We plan the way we want to live, but only God makes us able to live it.

(Proverbs 16:9, The Message)

This morning I realized why none of my pencils have erasers. And why one of the funniest birthday presents I received was a box of Vera Bradley pencils 🙂

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Today I am linking with Soli Deo Gloria and Marriage Mondays and True Story Blog Party and Unite and Titus 2 Tuesdays and What I Learned This Week and Behind The Scenes and Titus 2sday .