Best Laid Plans

When I was a little girl, maybe 10 or 12, I think even then I was a little, shall we say, PLAN oriented? I do remember plotting out my life and putting it to paper.  About this time I was coming to grips with the Second Coming of Christ, and so I had to include that in my plan.

I was going to finish school, possibly becoming a doctor.  Then I was going to marry a real hunk of a man, like in the movies.  We would live in perfect harmony and have two beautiful children, first a boy and then a little girl.

And then when the kids were about 8, Christ would return in a bolt of lightning and take us all away.  I chose 8 as the perfect age to end the parenting responsibility because, well, I’d helped the teacher in Sunday School and I figured after 8 these little guys just weren’t worth saving.  

As fate would have it, some of those dreams actually came true, and some not so much. At 17, I committed my life to Christian service, whatever that meant to me at the time, and I’ll have to say that was an unexpected blessing of the greatest extent.  Also, I did get the Hunk, and am happy to report that I've had the fabulous marriage.  I eventually got the perfect boy and then the perfect girl, but since the Second Coming hasn’t quite followed my schedule, we had to gut it out getting them up to their current ages of 30 and 38  (They are wonderful, by the way, and for that I’m really thankful!).

Nowadays, the plans I had made for myself are beginning to run off the edge of the paper, and Tony and I have been led to think a lot about LIFE lately, and all the thuds and thrills that we never planned on. 

And I think I’m going to have to plagiarize Oswald Chambers yet again. If you have your own copy of My Utmost for His Highest check out November 10th, from 1st Thessalonians 3:2. Paul is talking about how once we’re sanctified, it becomes difficult to be able to state what your aim in life is, because God has taken you up into HIS purpose by HIS Holy spirit.

Ironically our pastor touched on it this morning in his sermon from 1 Thessalonians 5:23-24.where he put it simply, “Jesus walked on earth, He was with us, but then He died and now, His Holy Spirit is IN us.”

Such a profound thought to realize that, in spite of all the plans I’ve worked out and clung to for years, I’m not actually my own.  Oswald goes on to say so aptly, “As long as we have a personal interest in our own character, we cannot get through into identification with God’s interests”.  

When I stop telling God what He can do for me, He can catch me up for what He wants without me constantly reacting.  He can crumple me up or exalt me; it’s up to Him.

This week we got what seemed at first to be some troublesome news.  But the more we process it, the more we’re coming to think that it might not be as bad as we originally thought. Anyway, they cancelled Tony’s surgery to remove the cancer because the doctor has decided that he can’t get it all with a scalpel, and besides, the tolerances are so tight that he’s pretty sure he’ll leave Tony with some pretty significant and permanent damage if he tries. 

So Plan B is to do “Hormone Therapy” and Radiation.  They’ve started the pills already, and he’ll have an injection in a few weeks that will hopefully stop the growth, then at some date later on, they’ll do radiation.  The Doctor did say that the “5 Year outcome of this method and surgery are about the same”, whatever that means.

And so with this news, again, not what we were exactly planning for, we have to keep praying that Tony and I will become tuned to God’s way of thinking.  Thank you again and again for supporting us in this journey!

Love ya,

Marsha