God's Plan is SO MUCH BIGGER than Our Own

A bit over a year ago, one of my coworkers retired leaving holes in our ability to teach some of our required courses.  He quit as close to the beginning of the semester as possible, which didn't leave my boss much time to come up with a plan to cover these courses.  Because three other people had left too, my boss really had limited options as to what to do to get everything covered.

She approached me and told me I would need to teach a course called Methods and Standards.  While I agreed,  I was skeptical. (what choice did I have, really? not to mention that I wanted to help us stay afloat on turbulent waters...)

I never had this class in school -- as in, I literally didn't even understand what the title of the course meant when I was assigned to teach it.  Yeah.  Clueless.  As I dug into learning the material, I realized that while I knew a bit more than I originally gave myself credit for but this was still a major stretch out of my comfort zone and area of expertise for sure.  Nonetheless, I did my best, worked to learn the material, and it actually turned out really well -- the students learned a lot and used what they learned in internships and co-ops and have written to tell me so more so than for any other course I've taught. My teaching evaluations turned out well too.

Last year was supposed to be my last year at Arkansas, and our department had an ambitious plan to hire three faculty members to cover some of the vacancies that had been created by people leaving.  However out of the 150+ applicants, for various reasons we were only able to hire one person.  Upon realizing that we were going to be short staffed again this year, my boss' first words were -- literally -- "Well who is going to teach methods?"

And that's a part of how I came to be offered another year's contract to stay on to teach at the University of Arkansas as a clinical faculty member.

God assures us in His word that all things work together for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purposes.  He promises us that He has a wonderful plan for each of our lives.  It's really hard not to marvel at the detail of the intricacy of the plans as they unfold and plan out.

In the last week or two, God has been showing me that some of the things that we think are the crappiest and the biggest mistakes and derailments -- teaching Methods, for example -- are actually exactly the things that He uses to position us and keep us where He wants us.  The things we view as liabilities are actually strategic positioning.  How gracious of Him to show me that as I continue to face challenges and things that I think, "Woof, this completely sucks and is not ideal!"

My boss said she would never hire an instructor, ever.  But she did.  And it was because I could teach methods.  It was because God's plan had given me an advantage I could never have created for myself, wouldn't have chosen, and initially didn't want to or think I could do.  He is funny that way.

My perspective is all wrong.  I know in part, and am just seeing in part.  God has a plan and it is far greater than I can comprehend with many more moving pieces than I could ever understand.  Knowing this helps me to trust Him as He leads me to do hard, confusing, and scary things.