Why I Decided To Stop Listening to What Everybody’s Saying I’m Supposed To Do

I recently read an article about “The Day I Decided To Stop Listening to What Everybody’s Saying I’m Supposed to do” (http://www.abigailmarygreen.com/blog/2015/4/3/the-day-i-decided-to-stop-listening-to-what-everybodys-saying-im-supposed-to-do-why-im-not-ready-to-get-married-in-44-days).

I read it in amazement of how much my life rang true to this girl’s thoughts.

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I am 21 years old. Living in my hometown. Taking classes online. Running a ministry. Working at a {the world’s greatest} church. Without a boyfriend. Without Greek affiliation. Without girlfriends to hang out with 24/7. And loving life.

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Today, I couldn’t be happier with where I am.

But for the last year and a half, I have had my share of struggles. Not only was I watching my friends “live out the college experience” but I lived under the pressure from others of not doing that myself.

Because that’s what I was “supposed” to be doing and I was reminded of just that.

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Much like Abigail Green, I was born to be a rebel.

Not a disobeying, disrespectful rebel.

But a born to be different rebel. I didn’t like to go with the norm.

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I chose to go for Mississippi State because my whole family either went for Auburn or Alabama and I had one grandfather who went to State. I wanted to be different.

I wanted to do something until everyone else started doing it, then I’d stop.

I didn’t want to go to Auburn, but eventually I was not given a choice.

I didn’t rush at Auburn because that’s what everyone expected. My mom and sister were both Tri Delta. I was an “in-house double legacy.” I was supposed to rush.

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Why just because someone says you’re “supposed to be” this way

Or that way because that’s just how “everyone else does it”

Why does that mean I have to do it?

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God made me. God made me Amy Catherine Smith. I was born on January 20, 1994 to Glen Barry Smith and Julie Catherine Wells. I have eight grandparents, one sister. Four aunts, and six cousins. I have two great grandmothers that I adored and a great aunt Ruth that I wanted to be just like. Nobody else in the world is like me. Someone might have my name, someone might have my birthday, but nobody has my story and nobody has my life.

Was my dad supposed to get lung cancer?

Was I supposed to live without him for the majority of my life?

Maybe so. Maybe that’s the way life was just “supposed to” go

But what’s good about those things. Those things that were “supposed to” happen.

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They’ve left me damaged.

They’ve left me broken.

They’ve left me ruined.

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And I’m supposed to go with what’s supposed to be.

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So what..

I’m supposed to be in a college town?

Living the “college experience?”

Taking classes in the classroom?

Going to sorority swaps?

Taking dates to formal?

Hanging out with all my friends my own age?

Maybe I’m even supposed to be marrying the man of my dreams soon?

These things are not wrong or bad. But, I’d be miserable.

But can’t we have enough faith in our God to know that maybe we can take a couple wrong steps off the right path. We have that free will. Can’t we have enough faith in God that if we are following His Will and His Way for our life.

If we truly believe that God made us fearfully and wonderfully and that His Works are all well. That He knows the number of hairs on our head and the numbers of days we have of breath. That He also has what our life looks like in His Hands as well. Maybe I’m not where I’m supposed to be according to the world.

But I by golly have enough faith in my God to think I am right where God has made me to be.

That He will lead me there.

I have come along way to get here.

I’ve taken some wrong steps.

Sometimes I’ve made the steps of getting here a lot longer than necessary.

And I have a long long long way to go to get to where I need to be

But God has His Plan. His Plan for my life. His Plan for your life.

You can mess up. You will make mistakes. You will do things the wrong way.

But don’t do things just because you’re supposed to.

Do things because God is telling you to. Leading you to.

Because God made you uniquely to.

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If you are following Him.

If you are seeking His Kingdom first.

If you are chasing Him above all else.

His Will above all things.

I can promise you that the life God has for you, the way He has made you to be, made you to look, made you to live will be immeasurably more fulfilling than the “supposed to be” of the world.

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So take your eyes off the “supposed to be.”

Quit focusing on the world’s opinion on every little thing.

Don’t live in the limitations that the world’s “supposed to be” will hold you to.

Live in the freedom knowing that God will give you your life just for you.

And it will be more free than you’ll ever find in the supposed to bes.

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So why did I decided to stop listening to what everybody’s saying I’m supposed to do

“Lord, you have examined me and know all about me. You know when I sit down and when I get up. You know my thoughts before I think them. You know where I go and where I lie down. You know everything I do. Lord, even before I say a word, you already know it. You are all around me—in front and in back— and have put your hand on me. Your knowledge is amazing to me; it is more than I can understand.

Where can I go to get away from your Spirit? Where can I run from you? If I go up to the heavens, you are there. If I lie down in the grave, you are there. If I rise with the sun in the east and settle in the west beyond the sea, even there you would guide me. With your right hand you would hold me.

I could say, “The darkness will hide me. Let the light around me turn into night.” But even the darkness is not dark to you. The night is as light as the day; darkness and light are the same to you.

You made my whole being; you formed me in my mother’s body. I praise you because you made me in an amazing and wonderful way. What you have done is wonderful. I know this very well. You saw my bones being formed as I took shape in my mother’s body. When I was put together there, you saw my body as it was formed. All the days planned for me were written in your book before I was one day old.

God, your thoughts are precious to me. They are so many! If I could count them, they would be more than all the grains of sand. When I wake up, I am still with you.

God, examine me and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any bad thing in me. Lead me on the road to everlasting life.

Psalm 139

“It is wildly exhilarating to declare yourself free from all that everybody is expecting you to do. & to rest in the reverie, that everything I am “supposed to do” is all just a big fat lie that I don’t have to listen to. & maybe just maybe, I was divinely designed to be exactly who I am, & to fit a mold made by anybody besides my creative Father is to rob the world of all the things that make me, me.” – Abigail Green

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Xo Amy