God Has a Plan for You—Yeah, Right

If you've been single for a while, chances are somebody has said it to you—"God has a plan for you."

People say it so confidently. Who could argue with it? We Catholics believe that God loves us and cares for us. He's looking out for us and knows what is best for us. We just have to trust his plan, right? Right.

Maybe you are thinking—Yeah, right. It's easy for people to say when they're not the ones who have to be patient. If God has a plan for me, he's keeping pretty quiet about it.

You have lost hope. Hope is another word for trust. It is one of the three theological virtues, the middle child between the more popular Faith and Charity. When you lose trust that God has a plan, it is because deep down you don't think God really gives a hang if you find happiness. He's got his favorites and you aren't in the club.

Or maybe you don't blame God. You just don't feel as if you deserve happiness. You're not worthy.

There was a moment in my life when I lost hope too.

I had been patient for about as long as I could remember—though the issue wasn't dating. I remember thinking, and even saying out loud, "God doesn't care about me." I was praying but he didn't seem to be hearing me. I was suffering but he didn't seem to care. I remember praying to Our Lady as a mother about it.

Then one night I tossed and turned barely able to sleep. I was on edge, stressed, and dreading a new day with no energy to get me through.

Around four in the morning the birds woke up and began to sing their version of the Hallelujah Chorus. They just greeted the dawn with an eruption of song. As I lay there listening to them, I heard this message, "Are you not of much more value than they?" Matthew 6:26

Yes, you are. You are valued. You need to go back to the source and meditate on the passage where Our Lord says that God the Father loves you so much he counts the hairs on your head (Luke 12:7). I love my kids and I used to spend hours gazing upon their exquisite beauty when they were babies, but I never went so far as to count the hairs on their heads, even though they didn't have that much hair.

God gazes upon you every minute. He thinks you are beautiful and takes delight in you.

If you doubt it, reflect on the moments in your life where you knew God was caring for you.

Did you feel you were in danger and called on your guardian angel and received help? Did you wonder how to handle a situation then you lifted up your heart and the answer came? Did you face difficulty at home or work, and received grace to power through? Or are you shaking your head and thinking—No, I take care of myself!

That could be why you are losing hope. You have stopped praying, stopped thanking God, and stopped depending on him.

When we are strong and willful, we often think that God's job is to give us what we want, when we want it, our way. God must think we're hilarious in our demands. Not one of us had control over how or when we got here yet we tell him what to do. It could be just that attitude that God is training out of us when he seems not to hear our prayers. Often, all he is waiting for is for us to let him show us the way. He's saying, I have a plan. Wait for it.

Sometimes it helps to look back a generation or two on how God got us here.

I was recently talking to my 91-year-old dad about how his parents, who married in 1905, met. They lived way up in northern Maine in an area that had one road. His mom came from a huge family which lived on that one road. Men on horseback would travel this road and stop to visit with the young ladies in the family. Then they would leave their pictures behind. It was CatholicMatch without the .com advantage.

When my dad was little he found a shoe box with a bunch of these little photographs and asked who they were. My grandma didn't remember their names. She had hardly known them. She said they were "chevaliers" which is French for horsemen and has a chivalrous connotation.

Well, my grandfather was a struggling farmer who rode a bicycle. He was not looking for a wife; he was looking for a way to get around. He traveled that road so often that my grandma's family felt they knew him. They would wave to him and he would wave back. One day, they waved and he drove in.

Soon after, he started spending time with my grandmother. Then one day she said, "Don't you think it's time we got married?" And he said, "Yeah, okay." He was surprised because the thought had not occurred to him. He had not been looking for a wife, but he found one. She had waited for the right one.

They were married for well over fifty years until the day my grandmother passed away with the Je vous salue, Marie on her lips.

God had a plan, but nobody knew it.

The chevaliers didn't know it. My grandfather didn't know it. My grandmother didn't know it—until she saw it. Then she knew.

That is how it works with trust. You don't know. If you knew, it would not be called trust.

God has a plan for you. It has been there all along. Instead of praying for what you want, when you want it, your way, pray for the grace to know it when you see it.