December 8, 2013: God Has a Plan… right?

Catching a little "Polar Express" before bed time.  Ali has her "Polar Express" hot chocolate mug in her hand from when we went on it in Colorado… and yep, it's full of hot chocolate!



Happiest kid in California on his tricycle…

Heaveno!

"Don't be afraid, God has a plan." 

- lyric from  one of the songs from Ali's Christmas pageant.

I think that might have been the essence of my last post.  However, I have to confess, sometimes I wonder.  I try to wrap my brain around the massive possibility that in all of this madness called life, there is a master conductor above it all, weeping, laughing, and cheering at all of it.  Hard to imagine, right?  I laugh at the audacity of even attempting to imagine it in the first place!

I am reminded of the conversation God had with me back in Minnesota. I'll try to recall it for you.  I'm pretty sure I've shared it before, so it might not be verbatim, but it'll be close.

I was sitting on my morning bench in the park reading all the comments from y'all, and praying for the day I was about to face in the PICU, when God simply said, "I'm taking her home."

"You're WHAT?" I replied.

"I'm taking her home."  He repeated.

"WHAT???  Seriously?!  You didn't just send us all the way here to MN, you didn't send us ALL THE SIGNS to come here… only to take her home!?"  I retorted.

"Look down at the sidewalk." God instructed.

"Okay."  I looked down.

"See the ants going back and forth in the crack?"  A highway of red ants were galloping back and forth in the groove between the two pieces of sidewalk.

"Yes."

"Are they in the same reality as you are?"

"Huh?"

"I mean, if you stepped on them, would you impact their reality?"

"Yes."

"Now look up."

 I looked up, and saw the downtown Minneapolis skyline through a break in the tree line.

"Can the ants see what you see?"

I looked back down.  "No."

I got the point.  Just as the ants couldn't see what I could see from their vantage point, I couldn't see what God could see from His vantage point.  I just had to trust.

That was some of the heaviest lifting - spiritually speaking - I've ever had to do.  However, the stakes were SO HIGH, that there was no illusion of controlling her life.  I HAD to turn her life over to God.  Faith and trust in a plan were actually easier for me to employ in that circumstance than in the day-to-day busy-ness that I find myself in these days.

I'll also confess that I have been really reluctant to "try on" faith and trust again.  Here's where I get tripped up, and PLEASE tell me if you can relate to this.  I "have faith" that God will do… my will - not His.  I got tripped up and "burned" in MN because I was praying for my will, not His.

You know what I just realized for the first time?

It may be semantics, but I resist the idea of "God's Will."  Why does God need a will?  He is the almighty all-everything, right?  What could He possibly need/want? Still, when contrasting the phrase "God's Will" with "God has a Plan," I find myself gravitating toward the second phrase… somehow I feel less like a pawn and more like a partner.  Hahaha, once again, there goes my ego… partnering with God.  STILL… part of me wants that kind of relationship… Co-creating as some call it.  Maybe there is some level of partnership available, AND there is a level God hangs out at that is simply too tall to grasp… like the ants trying to see downtown.  There's probably a good song title, book title in there…

The Ants Can't See Downtown, and You Can't See God's Plan… So You Just Gotta Trust.

Don't think that one is making it onto the empowering/inspirational self-help shelf any time soon, but hey, you never know!

:P

God night.