Dreams don’t always work out. It’s a truth that is universally accepted, painfully learned and usually made personal in your 20s.
Grace Thornton has experienced this firsthand, and in February 2012 she was compelled to write a blog post about the pain of unmet expectations.
“At the time when I wrote the blog, I had a lot of people around me struggling with what life was supposed to be if it didn’t look the way they always dreamed it would,” she said. “And a lot of them were struggling with who God was in their life because He hadn’t brought along the kind of life they thought they were supposed to have. Their struggle really resonated with me because I had just been through it too.”
Blog post gone viral
In the post, titled “I Don’t Wait Anymore” on gracefortheroad.com, Thornton shared how knowing God wasn’t the consolation prize — He was the goal, the ultimate prize.
It was a message that struck a chord with a generation, reaching more than 2 million views and shared more than 10,000 times on Facebook. One of those shares reached an editor with Zondervan, a Christian publishing company, and a book offer with the same title was extended to Thornton in the summer of 2014.
“I was scared. … Even though I want more than anything to be able to tell people what life can be like when Jesus is your life and how that can replace all the expectations for how your life should look in a way that I can’t describe, I also didn’t want to somehow become the poster child of the godly single woman.”
Growing up in church, Thornton assumed her life would take on the normal trajectory — college, husband, career, kids. But her life changed course when she and the man she expected to marry broke up.
“All of it came crashing down at that point,” she said. Although she was frustrated and angry, the breakup was a catalyst.
“Eventually it set me on a path where I had to either know God for who He really was or not at all.” Middle ground, where she had been her whole life, was not an option.
“If I really wanted to have the life that He says He offers, it was one or the other.”
So Thornton began to read the Bible with a discipline that was fueled by desire.
“At the beginning it was just me deciding that it was important enough to want it. … I think that I felt the weight of who I knew God was supposed to be and I wanted to figure that out. If it could be the way that the Bible said it should be, I wanted to figure that out.
“As I began to change I began to lay down things [and] surrender things like, ‘God even if I don’t get married … I want You more than that (dream).’
“As His Word began to shape my heart I could see the way I thought about my life changing and how He felt about my life changing.”
After about a year of daily, concentrated Bible reading coupled with the intense desire to change, Thornton knew she was different. The change was gradual, but it was life-altering.
“Sometimes without meaning to, I think we see Jesus as a means to an end or a part of the life that we want instead of being our entire lives. I think we hear that said — that He should be our life — but when we actually do that it radically changes everything. And that life is worth investing our entire lives to have.”
More than worth it
Thornton’s journey brought her to a relationship with God that was more tangible than she had thought possible. And though it was scary to lay her dreams at God’s feet and allow Him to take them away or change them, it was more than worth it.
“Don’t underestimate the power of who God is to completely change the way your life looks and feels in the midst of that. I think the 20s are a place where a lot of people find themselves coming out of their younger years with a view of God that’s really flat and confined and maybe pretty lifeless, honestly. And they’re coming out of that with this really strong view of how life was supposed to be.”
The right perspective
Around the same time the big questions hit: “What is my purpose?” “What do I want out of life?” “Who do I want to be?” And if your view of God is small, Thornton said, then these questions can seem like massive concepts with nebulous answers. But if you have the right perspective of God, it can change everything.
“Those restless places in our lives are the perfect place … to completely surrender and let God totally re-teach us who He is and re-teach us to desire Him first, and let our lives flow out of that place instead of just trying to get answers.
“I think maybe our whole lives God might have seemed simple — not in a good way,” she said. “But the reality is He is so big and amazing that life with Him is so much bigger than we’re able to wrap our minds around.
“[It’s] so much better than we’re able to imagine, and I think the simple concept of God’s love for us is bigger than anything else.
“His heart is for us to know Him, making that the entire goal of our life and then trusting Him no matter what happens.”
At the end of the day, Thornton said, a life with Him is better than anything else — even our wildest dreams and best-laid plans.
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Thornton’s journey to author
As a storyteller and blogger, Grace Thornton has found her narrative taking her all over the world.
After growing up and graduating from college in Mississippi, she came to Birmingham to fill a need for a two-week-long temporary position at The Alabama Baptist (TAB) while a staff member was on medical leave. Seven years later, she was still there, having served as an intern, web and advertising associate and then assistant editor.
She left TAB in 2010 to work with a Christian organization in England and the Middle East, but over the years she’s continued to serve as a correspondent.
She loves a good story. She believes that God writes the best stories, even when our lives may not look anything like what we imagined.
She’s passionate about knowing God through His Word and encouraging others to discover Him and let Him write the story of their lives too.
Her blog, gracefortheroad.com, received more than 2 million visits after her post “I Don’t Wait Anymore,” on living fully as a single person, went viral in 2012. And her book by the same name — set for release May 10 — is available for preorder from Amazon and other retailers. (TAB)
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