Meet Dawn Owens!
For I know the plans I have for you…
It was over seven years ago that the words of Jeremiah 29:11 were spoken over my life; well our life, that of me and my husband, Chris. They came in the midst of uncertainty. A time in which I knew who I was in Christ but that’s about all I knew, for sure. My husband and I had only been married for a year, if that, and had been through more than most couples. I’d had a pacemaker put in due to heart complications and he’d had a nasty battle with the first round of depression after hopes and dreams of his slowly dissipated, one right after another. The timing couldn’t have been more perfect and looking back now, I know why it came when it did, because it didn’t get better, it only got worse.
“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
(Jeremiah 29:11)
At times that verse was what we were able to hold on to, even if it only felt like a thin piece of string. I remember times when my husband would say, “If I hear that verse one more time, I may just scream.” We didn’t feel like God had plans to prosper us, to not harm us, to give us hope and a future. What we’d experienced in the past seven years took us into pits of depression, sometimes solo, sometimes shared together. We had lost two babies, a few jobs, an aunt and a grandmother. We’d believed big things about our future, desires God had placed in our hearts, deires that others even confirmed in us but, what we hoped for and experienced became disappointment after disappointment. We surely weren’t feeling hopeful... more hopeless, than anything else.
I started to really wonder what it meant to have hope. Why bother, hoping in anything at all, if all that you hope for, all that I hoped for was not what I was getting out of life?
Was this really the plans that He had for us?
Is this life of challenges, disappointment after disappointment, devastation and illness all that He had in store for me?
What about the part of the verse that says, He had plans to prosper me, to not harm me, and to give me hope? When do I get that part of His truth?
The answer to that question came in the last 9 months. It was back in November when I was really struggling with what God’s plan was for me here on planet earth. I am a fairly positive person, most of the time but the last seven years had really gotten a hold of me and I was not in a healthy place with God, and I knew it. I was desperate for a word from God and would do almost anything, to get it. I needed something, something that said it was worth hanging in there for, something to help me plow forward, something to make me see the light at the end of the tunnel. That word was no different than the word I heard seven years ago, it was the same then, but sometimes an old word can come fresh and anew, when that word comes in due season.
“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
(Jeremiah 29:11)
You see I had gotten it all wrong. That verse doesn’t say, ‘For I know the plans you have for you and they are to prosper you…no. The verse says, “I know the plans that I have for you. That “I” being Him. The God of the universe, the one who is charge. The King of Kings who is enthroned in heaven and the earth is his footstool. (Isa 66:1) The recognition of this changed everything. It gave me proper perspective of where I stand compared to my Heavenly Father. It reminded me who was in controlled and who was not. It was when I realized this and began surrendering my plans, dreams and the hope I had for the future that I realized what it meant to hope in the future. It turned a life of hopelessness into a life of hopefulness.
What I have learned through it all is that, yes hope does change everything. But it’s having a proper perspective on who we place our hope in and not in the circumstances that surround us.
More about Dawn....in her own words...
A born yankee, now living in Northern Alabama, Dawn is a wife, mother, and aspiring writing. Desperate for her Father’s voice in her everyday life, she finds no greater joy than seeking after Him and sharing her findings with others. You can learn more about Dawn, her experiences living in the south, and her journey with her Savior at lifeincullman.wordpress.com.
