Changing Plans

How quickly plans can change.

One Monday evening you’re sitting by the side of a football field thinking about how you survived a jam-packed school day—and you got everything done, which means you haven’t over-planned your school year, so good job, you—and then all of a sudden, your eldest son has torn his ACL and ripped his meniscus and broken off part of his tibia.

You’ve blinked and suddenly your carefully crafted schedule is forcibly reorganized. Instead of the well-arranged school days you anticipated, there are long hours on hold with insurance and long hours hanging out in doctor’s offices. There are X-rays and MRIs (and then more X-rays). There is surgery and crutches and braces. There is breaking every day down into what pain meds go when. There is stress eating your way through the hours in the surgical waiting room. There is helping your fourteen-year-old shower. There is sitting beside him at night when he can’t sleep because of the pain. And then, once there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, there is a whole lot of PT.

This, my friends, is what it looks like when things go well (truly). And they have gone well. Littles is healing up nicely. Insurance has covered everything. His doctors have been great. His physical therapist is fantastic (plus, she comes with a bunch of adorable dogs, so it’s like puppy therapy with your physical therapy). Littles’ community has loved him well with visits and care packages and encouragement. And he’s been a champion patient: uncomplaining and cooperative.

All these things are true. It is also true that my best-laid plans have gone awry.

The last three months haven’t looked how I imagined when I sat down this summer with three different school planners and my bullet journal. The temptation is to give an easy answer here, quote a quick verse about God working all things for good, and move on, feeling self-righteous…though ultimately still frustrated.

But the truth is that I don’t need to smack a fake smile on these last few months and say they’ve somehow been better than I planned (for the record: there have been plenty of really great parts). I don’t need to do that because, at the end of the day, these last few months have far more to say about my identity than they do about my planning skills.

The reality is that plans change, and we change with them.

We can become bitter. We can get angry. We can be victims. We can exist in a permanently numb survival fog.

Or we can remember that our first identity is not as a great planner. We are more than our ability to do all the good things that we have come up with for ourselves to do. We are also more than our ability to roll with the punches when our plans fall apart.

If we remember that, in Christ, our true identity is more about who God is than what we are able to do, then we can recognize and remember that Jesus was actually really blunt about how our plans were going to work out. He clearly said to us, “In this world you will have trouble.” And Peter, one of Christ’s closest friends, warns us not to be surprised when we’re faced with fiery trials, as if something strange were happening to us.

But Jesus doesn’t end with telling us our best-laid plans are going to go up in flames. He ends with a statement about himself: “But behold, I have overcome the world.” He doesn’t say, “In this world you will have trouble, but don’t worry: everything will work out just fine!” No. In this world, the trouble is inevitable, but the one who walks with us has already overcome.

Is that comforting to us? Some days, maybe. But other days, it may simply allow us the space to fall apart, knowing that the one who has overcome has also promised not to leave us or forsake us.

Who we are gets to be centered around the fact that, due to Christ’s gift for us, we walk life with a God who is worth trusting because He is good and because He has both limitless creativity and unfathomable control when it comes to His plans.

When we remember that, we then find that within the implosion of our plans is actually endless opportunity…if we are brave enough to take it.

Endless opportunity to still do good in ways that we couldn’t imagine when we filled out our planners months ago. Endless opportunity to give glory to God even in the hard times, to show the world that He is the one who has already overcome all this brokenness and will one day bring complete healing. And endless opportunity to celebrate the creativity and communion, sovereignty and solace of a God who continues to defy expectations.

But to get there, we have to be willing to imagine more than our planner selves could see before. And I think that sometimes we also have to be willing to mourn the death of our broken hopes. And neither of those things comes easily.

But if we can be brave enough…what else could we see? About ourselves? About God? About life?

I don’t know. And some days I’m a little scared to find out.

But maybe I don’t need to be. Maybe the dismantling of my plans will allow God to build something far more beautiful in me and in my life.