Divine Plan or Pattern?

In several of my readings recently, I have come across the idea that all of us have a Divine Plan or Pattern for our lives.  I am not sure that I agree with the term “plan” or “pattern.”  Either one sets up a “set” path that doesn’t feel good. 

Long thinking about that and I have decided that no matter what the plan or pattern is, the Divine way of it is, that it is all good.  We have options in either a plan or a pattern and all of it is for the highest good we can imagine for ourselves. 

My pattern based on my “tribe” or childhood would have been staying in North Dakota, probably marrying someone with a family farm, improving my milking, rock picking and butchering skills along with having a vegetable garden and learning how to can the proceeds.  That option of the pattern wasn’t for me and I was gone three days after I graduated from high school.

In looking back in my life, I realize that every option or opportunity I took advantage of helped to prepare me for what I ultimately choose in getting into the ministry.  All of my past helped me to deal with or to give me the ways to tap into my intelligence to resolve or find a solution to whatever was going on in my life at the time.  It certainly prepared me for what I didn’t want to experience ever again.

I think this happens with everyone.  We just don’t take the time to put it all together or realize that all of our experiences are connected to get us to where it is that we want to go.  I know that when I started out, I didn’t know where it was that I was going, just that I needed to get there.  A very uncertain way to live but I think a lot of us do just that.  Unlike most of my peers, I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up, just that I wanted to get out of North Dakota and be “someone.”  Now I realize that I was suffocating in the midst of the tribe. 

Somehow, without a direct plan or pattern, I stumbled into the ministry.  It has been a wonderful way for me to get an education in all areas of life.  It has afforded me the opportunity to travel internationally and the United States, which has allowed me to witness different ways of living, people and culture.  It has set up the opportunity for me to start a new way of thinking and a new way of living what it is that I have learned in my writing.  And I am sure that I can probably come with several more ways of taking advantage of all that I know and all that I have done in a new direction and a new way of filling up that part of me that yearns for meaning and purpose in my life. 

Another thought I had was that the “plan” is golf.  The “pattern” is the golf course.  Each of us has the opportunity to choose the course and choose the irons or woods or putters to get through the course.  Within each plan or pattern are a myriad of choices or opportunities in which to excel or just have a good time.  Along the way, there are sand pits, trees, waterways and sometimes animals just to make it more interesting.  Our life plan or pattern is exactly the same.

Every stage of my life has served a purpose.  I am ready for the next stage and the next adventure of what presents itself for me.  How exciting is that?