How did I get here?

"Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, 'This is the way; walk in it.'"--Isaiah 30:21
This morning I was praying for a young friend.  He is struggling to know the Lord's plan for his life and where to walk out that plan geographically.  As I was thinking about this, I began to wonder why He allows us to seemingly wander at times.  I mean, some of us really do pray about where to live, which career path to follow, who to marry, what ministry in which to get involved, etc.  Have you ever felt as though you followed exactly what the Lord directed you to do, only to get there and realize that you must not have heard Him correctly?  Over the last several years of my life, there have been so many times that I felt that we didn't hear correctly, and I wondered what disaster our lives had suddenly gotten cosmically sucked into.  After days and weeks and months of soul-searching prayer and striving to figure out where we went wrong, I began to wonder: 
What if....this was the Lord's plan all along?
What if....His intent is not to send me to the country club to grow me up?
What if....He allowed us to enter a dry, barren season to change our paradigm?
What if....I put on my God-glasses and look at what He accomplished around me in spite of our pain?

This is what I have learned.  Perfection tells us that we have to step in perfect cadence to life; grace tells us we have permission to smell the roses along the way.  There were many roses that I had the opportunity to smell along the past seven years of my life.  Some of them were thorny, no doubt, but what if I had never had the opportunity to smell them?  What if I had refused, worried that my cadence was off and I was too focused on getting back on beat?  What if God Himself is the Drummer, and He meant for the cadence to change?  What if every turn we take, every move we make is ripe with possibility for Him to touch someone using our hands? Our feet?  Our friendship and prayers?  I will never achieve perfection.  I can only keep my God-glasses near enough to put them on and know that He promises to be the Voice behind me, telling me to walk in His way.