"He will direct your paths"

I sent an e-mail to a friend tonight. I decided to post part it on here, too.

I was trying to fall asleep last night, and I had one of those moments of complete clarity. Maybe you know what I mean... the kind where, two months after something happens, you go "OH, I GET IT NOW." And it's a little bit annoying, because it's late at night and you want to sleep. But mostly it's just cool because, after all that time, you get "it." Anyway, I had one of those moments, and I decided to share it with you.

I think some of the first Bible verses I memorized were Proverbs 3:5-6 ("Trust in the Lord with all Your heart...and He will direct your paths.") But I've also always wondered what that looks like. Because if we have free will, it's not like we lose that when we start to trust the Lord. And I've been alive long enough to realize that following God is not always easy, and it is often scary. So, I guess I took those verses and I believed them, but I never really GOT them. But I think I finally understand, at least what those verses mean to me. Do you remember that crazy two week period or so, when I: stopped talking to my best friend for two weeks, decided to apply for Globalscope the night before the application was due, got invited to do Puebla in the fall, had to ask my parents if I could do something I'd never told them about before, and then had to bail on two of my best friends for housing? Well, here's the thing that hit me last night: I NEVER thought about not doing one of those things. Those two weeks began with me deciding to trust God wholeheartedly, and then each of those decisions just HAPPENED. It's not that there were't two different possibilities each time, but I guess I never considered half of them. I was scared to do a lot of them (you might remember the time I called at 10:30 on Saturday morning to ask if we could talk because I was convinced [those two friends] were about to hate me =)), but I never thought about not doing them. So... maybe that's what God directing my paths looks like. It's not that things aren't scary; instead, it's that I'm already on the path He chose for me before I ever realize there's another option.