Seeking Turtle Shells

A few days ago, one of the Youtubers I follow shared a video showing off a picture book he wrote and illustrated when he was twelve. The book was titled The Turtle Without a Shell, and it's basically The Ugly Duckling, but with a reptile instead of a water fowl. Throughout the book, the "turtle" travels the world, searching for a suitable shell, only to learn later that he was never meant to have one. This reminds me of the amount of work we sometimes do to forge our own path in life instead of following the path the Lord laid out for us. All of us were given and promised many marvelous blessings, including every blessing we'll ever need. Why, then, would we spend so much time seeking out things that we're not meant to have, at least not yet? I know that the Lord won't deprive us of any good thing we truly need, so when He withholds something from us, we can be reasonably certain that whatever it is that we don't have is not a thing we need right now. Of course, God does encourage us to "ask, seek, and knock," but we shouldn't wear ourselves out seeking things that aren't what's best for us. Not all of us need turtle shells, so we probably shouldn't spend too much time or energy seeking them.