What blessings am I missing?

Just over a month ago, I wrote a little bit about MY plan versus GOD's plan for my life. About how what we think we know isn't always the big picture that God sees for our lives...

 (Read that post HERE)

I have thought about the topic more since that day ... especially this last week. A friend of mine really had me thinking....

How many blessings do I miss out on because they don't come the way *I* think they should? 

Laura Story has a song called "Blessings," and it really says exactly this point. 

What if ....

Sometimes, I have a visual in my mind of how I would like things to go; of how I think everything will work out. But there are times that God has something else in mind. Sometimes, in a bad situation, God shows an answer, a way through it, that may not seem like what I had in mind, but in the BIG picture of it all (the picture that HE sees clearly), it is the best option. 

Recently I was talking to the Mr. about a situation that we're not liking. But I told him that PERHAPS the way things are going is God's way of bringing us through... that perhaps, maybe, if I can't change the situation that I'm smack dab in the middle of, maybe changing my perspective about the situation will help. Sometimes I can't see what is right in front of my face because I'm so stuck on how *I* think everything will work out.

Another friend of mine recently said that she'll "just know" when God gives her something that she wants because it will fit in her pre-conceived notion of how it will look. When she said that, it really made me wonder.... how many blessings do I miss out on, how many opportunities lay by the wayside, because I am so focused on how I have things planned that I don't stop to think that perhaps GOD's ideal is different? That maybe God's plan for hope and a future looks differently than my own? 

Someone once said that she used to wonder what was the point of praying so much for the things you want when it may not be what God wants... then she realized, and I believe it's SO true, that the more we pray to Him and spend time seeking Him, the more what we want WILL come into agreement with what He has in store. We spend time with Him so that our plans and His will coincide! So that we WILL see the blessings He puts in our paths no matter how they look! We will want what He wants so much more than our own pre-conceived notions!

Lord, help me to spend so much time with you that 

your blessings don't line up to my ideals, 

but that my ideals will line up to your blessings!! 

Amen!