When you’re young, it’s quite easy to believe that life is in your hands. That you determine your destiny. That you choose your life’s path. After all, every day you get up, dress yourself, and head out into the world on your own two feet, with all your ambitions and passions and goals and dreams. You know where you’re headed, and you know how to get there.
Which is good. Part of being young is using that gift of enthusiastic energy to make yourself.
But then, as you get older, you begin to understand that life is also something that comes to you. Not something that you control. Life is what is handed to you, not what you chose from all of the myriad of options on the cosmic shopping store shelf. All of life is a gift, which requires humble and grateful acceptance rather than success-driven strong-arming.
Which is also good. Part of getting older is learning to accept whatever comes as part of how God is making you.
Life does not always lead you where you want to go. You can—of course, as many do—fight it long and hard if you really want to. Or you can learn to ride the current. Which, as it turns, out is also when it can become a lot more relaxing and enjoyable. Because it is then, when you give up control and drop your oars, that you can truly hear the voice of Jesus saying, “Follow me!”
Because “Follow me!” also necessarily means “Stop leading yourself.” Because following Jesus looks more like floating on a river than checking off boxes on a project manager’s to-do list.
