God’s plan for each of us

CS Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity: “I find I must borrow yet another parable from George MacDonald. Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on: you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently he starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of…” (“Counting the Cost” ).
During the early part of my life, I wasn’t very good at being me. No one could be any more vulnerable and at the same time more assertive than I was. In public I pushed in because I was desperate for validation, and then in private I rolled up into a ball of insecurities. And finally, I was forced to abandon the most difficult “self” of all (at least for me), self-effort. My absolute inability to fix or manage my life made me ready for the Lord’s regeneration. … After my dramatic saving moment, I found Lewis’ very helpful house analogy for this improvement process. (drawn from Living Calm, chapters 21, 22)