I’m a planner. It’s as simple as that. My children know it. My husband, Farmer Dean knows it. My church family knows it. When my family takes a vacation together, their only question is, “Mom, is this allowed in the plan?”
When January arrives each year, I set aside a day for planning. I pray, I prep, and I grab my yellow highlighter, large erasable white board, and huge calendar.
Ever since I was a little girl, I have loved planning. My father was a college professor and organized our lives around the school’s calendar. We’d plan out our vacation a year in advance, trips to visit grandparents, trips to the grocery store, trips to a neighboring city. We had a plan and we stuck to it.
As I entered high school, I planned everything I could. I helped my boss plan her sales at the jewelry store downtown, helped our pastor plan the church services, and helped teachers plan events. When teachers would hand me a two-thousand-word paper that was due in a month, I’d make a plan to get it finished that week.
I planned. It made me happy. It made me encouraged. I felt like I had control.
Currently, our circumstances across the world have led me to understand something at a deeper level. Many things are out of our plan, far out of our control. We like to plan our years, plan our weeks, plan our days. But something so horrific has stood in the way of our journey. Something affecting us all. A pandemic.
As I turn to Scripture for comfort, I remind myself of this fact: God is sovereign and still in control. He’s allowing this for a reason. Proverbs 16:9 says, “In their hearts humans plan their course, but the Lord establishes their steps.”
God is watching over us through these dark days. We would never plan for this. But our plan for this life needs to always include releasing our hold on what we think life should be, and allowing God to make it what He needs it to be. Hold on. God’s got a plan. It’s better than anything we could come up with using yellow markers, a white board, and a huge calendar.
