The Best Laid Plans

"When are you due?"

She asked brightly while bagging our groceries.  It was a classic case of record-breaking hot day coinciding with running out of groceries, and I was shopping with my two girls.  My feet were swollen; it was a miracle I had made it all the way through the store.  At the check out, my older daughter proudly pointed out "My mommy has a baby in her belly!" as though my torpedo stomach was a secret to anyone.

When was I due?  If I had my say, I'd be having a baby right this very moment.  God has other plans.  The question, completely benign and polite, grates on the nerves of most pregnant women this close to being done. We have general guidelines, 40-ish weeks seems to be standard, but in reality each baby, each Mom, each pregnancy does its own thing.  For the most part, babies come when they come, not when Mamas, or even doctors, predict.

But predict we do...not just babies, but everything.  We plan, although we see every day how these plans are derailed left and right.

Culturally, we are planners.  I am heading to a graduation party today where the freshly minted grad will be asked a hundred times over what his plans are for the next few years.  It doesn't stop there.  When we find "the one" everyone wants to know when we plan on getting married.  Then when we plan on having kids.  Where we plan to send them to school.  Plan, plan, plan.

Planning ahead is fine - good, even.  Its important to have a rough idea of where things are headed.  But I sometimes wonder at the sense of power planning gives us - the idea that we truly are in control of what happens.  We're not.

Recently, a friend planned her 3rd natural homebirth; she ended up with a cesarean in a hospital.  Another friend brought home a child with severe medical problems.  She didn't plan that.  How many of us know people who have lost jobs recently that they planned to have until retirement?  Or lost homes they planned to live in for the rest of their lives?  A couple who planned to wait to have babies, only to find out they waited "too long"?  What of the soldiers who planned to come home to their families, only to never make it home?

These things are commonplace, plans not working out.  So why do we continue to put such stock in our own planning?  No one plans to get cancer, or to die in a car crash.  Yet these things happen - daily.


Our best laid plans are really just flimsy, filmy visions of what could be.  Hopes for a life lived uncomplicated.  Yet we know that uncomplicated isn't always best for us.  Its when we are led through the trials, the fires, the unplanned that we have the opportunity to fully rely on our faith, and on the One who has the true, real plan for our lives.  Although it is often painful to let go of the ideals we held for our lives, we can be assured that He holds it all firmly in the palm of His hand.

Here's a truth to hold on to, during the planning of a life and the falling through of some of those earthly plans:

Proverbs 19:21
Many are the plans in a man's heart, but it is the LORD's purpose that prevails.

And really, what could be better than that?