Five Year Plan

Tonight I sat in a booth at a wings restaurant with a friend who knows me well. We were discussing some pretty heavy things when my friend looked at me and said, “Cassandra Hendon, where do you think we’ll be in five years?”

What a question. I honestly didn’t have any clue.

It’s not a profound question. It’s repeated often in job interviews. It’s lectured in business schools – “A Five-Year Plan.” But for me, it gave me pause. There’s been a lot of talk around me lately about forward motion. Moving to a new place, a new level.

But where do I think I’ll be in five years? I haven’t thought about it. I’ve been so concerned with the “now”, with what’s right immediately in front of me, with a reactionary sort of life, immediately responding to the dilemma, tasks, or goals right in front of my face, that I haven’t ever thought of where I’m headed. So where am I going?

Tonight I sit here and question myself. What do I want? Do I have the courage to even dream, to think that there could be something possible for me outside what is in front of me, outside of the swirl of the business of life?

So here are some things I want for my life. Real, honest, brave things that I’m saying, acknowledging to everyone.

I want to be completely in love with Jesus. I want to pursue a love relationship with Jesus so fervently that it drives every decision I make, even the small ones. I want to be the woman of God I used to think I could be as a child, before I saw people fall, before disappointment jaded my view of Christians and of myself. I want to live above mediocrity. I want to pursue Jesus above all else – above the mundane, above my own desires for comfort, for fulfillment, for satisfaction. I want to consistently fix my eyes on Jesus, not on my circumstances, not on my schedule, not on whether I’m too tired, too burned out, too busy, too lazy. I want to guard my relationship with him so zealously that nothing can come between him and me. Instead of being a Gomer, I want to be faithful, through and through. I want everything in my life to flow out of the time that I spend with him, so that I’m not shaken in hard times.

I want love. I want it in the right time and I want it in the right person. I don’t want love for love’s sake, or because I feel my clock ticking, or because “everyone else” has love. I want it because I was formed to want it, I was created to love a man, to be a helper to him, to support him in his pursuit of being who God has called him to be (and through that support, fulfill part of my own purpose as a woman), to have his children and love them and raise them to love the Lord. I’m tired of pretending that love is gross or overrated or not for me just because I don’t have it right now. Whether I get it or not, I want it. Maybe within five years, maybe not, but whenever God sees fit to bring me to the one He made me for.

I want to rescue children. I want to take in children who are abused and neglected and become a foster parent. I also want to reach out to women (both in the US and abroad) considering abortion. I want to approach them in a new, unorthodox way that transcends judgment. I want to go to other countries like China where abortion isn’t a big deal, where it’s offered as after-the-fact birth control, and minister destiny and hope to women contemplating it. I want to save babies from death by introducing women to a God of purpose and love. I want to use creative methods to take an inflammatory political issue and put a face and a name to it, to make it less about left and right and more about wrong and right. I want my friends, who are the most creative people in the world, to play a part in this.

I want to write and record songs. I want to write songs that bring hope to people, songs that transport people to the throne room of heaven, songs that stir people up, songs full of the Word of God that pop into peoples’ heads in decision-making times and help them discover and do God’s will.