Growing God’s Plan

Written by Mary Waller on Friday of the First Week of Advent

“God has a plan.” I don’t feel reassured. Am I just supposed to coast along and trust God to get me through?

Even with so many brilliant people around me, I struggle to make meaningful friendships in my new environment. Classes and readings take up a lot of my energy, and when classmates want to meet up for beers, I don’t want to go. I work on maintaining relationships that I already have—my mom, my boyfriend back in California, my roommate from freshman year who had become best friend from college. I continue to lay roots in places where I am not, but that leaves me without a garden where I am.

For me, recognizing that God has a plan isn’t so hard—that next step to figure out how God is leading me is the real challenge. How could feeling isolated and unsure of my path be leading me anywhere? I continued my normal “faith routine:” church on Sundays, prayers before bed. Still not grounded, I joined a Small Church Community at Saint Mary’s where I engaged peers in faith discussions, shared my fears and developed new habits for prayer and reflection.

Looking back over my semester at my last meeting, I found that my uncertainty and time alone exposed me to a “waiting for a response” component of prayer. My prayers ground me in my faith goals and challenge me to trust that God will answer. The actual waiting slows me down. I have to focus on “listening” to God, and the listening further invests me in the seeds I have sewn.

I still don’t have a thriving garden, but I’m proud of the faith I’ve grown this semester, and I’m glad that I didn’t grow it alone.

Questions for Reflection:
What problems or worries have you brought before God?
How are you engaged in waiting for a response?

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Mary Waller
Mary Waller is a first year law student from Chicago. Before coming to Ann Arbor for law school, she studied Spanish and Cognitive Science at the University of Southern California.
Email: wallerma@umich.edu