Life beneath the layers of our own plans and desires

​Last Saturday night, I was waiting for Celia and Meg to arrive for what I thought was our last meet up of the night. I was tired. Dreaming of my bed. I was ready for a long day to end.

When they arrived, they asked me if I'd be willing to meet them just one more time a couple of hours later.

I confess, my first thoughts were about me. I thought - this new plan of theirs is about to disrupt a good plan of mine.

But I was there to help. That's what I came for. So I reluctantly said yes.

As I drove along the Blueridge Parkway to the spot where I agreed to meet them later, I noticed people filling up the overlooks. Many of them had big cameras pointing to the west. It didn't immediately occur to me what they were up to. Like I said, I was tired.

When I got to the spot where I agreed to meet my friends, I discovered it too was an overlook. Only, no one else was at this one. I had this place to myself.

As I looked to the west, I saw what all the people and all the cameras were up to. I was suddenly standing in the middle of one of the most spectacular sunsets I'd ever witnessed.

I stood there watching, mesmerized, as the sun settled deeper into the earth. The more it disappeared, the more the colors of the sky changed and shifted and danced. And it began to occur to me that I wasn't there - by myself - a spectator to this once in my lifetime event - by accident.

I knew I wasn't there by accident because my mind began to wrap itself around the magnitude of what I was witnessing. I began to contemplate all the miracles that go into coordinating such a beautiful scene.

Standing there alone, I felt small. But in many ways, I felt as significant as I'd felt in a long time. Small; a man standing against the backdrop of a perfectly timed universe. Significant; a man worthy of a front row seat to it all.

Worthy.

Sometimes we miss our worth because we run around seeing the world and hearing the world through the lens of our own desires and plans. When we have our own plans, we try to coordinate scenes that look like our plans, we migrate to scenes that sound like them.

But some nights we are asked to look and hear beyond our own desires. We are asked to have a vision of the layers of life that go deeper than me. To listen to a voice that shouts, you are significant.

There is a beauty that happens when we quit trying to hear and we simply listen. Magic happens when we quit trying to see and simply lean into a vision.

Things didn't go according to my plan last Saturday night.

Sometimes, that's exactly how life leads us to the best plan of all.