Plans Are Just Proposals

Life throws you curveballs sometimes, and they mess up your plans.

Way to start with the obvious, huh?

When you get one of these surprises while you’re young and without a husband or children counting on you, you have to worry only about you. When you’re married, you have a partner to share challenges. But when you have children, you must deal with your own curveball while simultaneously tossing balls representing each of your kids into the air—and not letting them fall. This gets harder with each new life God brings into the world.

To illustrate this fact, let me give you just a few examples from my own life.

I promised my three-year-old daughter, Abigail, that she could pick out one big gift instead of having a birthday party. When she saw a huge stuffed alligator at a local store, her big brothers talked her into making it her gift. It cost $38, and I agreed that would be a fair price. I talked about it with Abigail for two weeks, and lots of excitement and chatter about the gigantic stuffed alligator she’d get echoed through the house.

On the big day, we went to the store and I grabbed the alligator as my little towheaded daughter grinned from ear to ear. (I’m pretty sure her eyes were sparkling too.) At the register, the lady said the total cost was $88. I looked at the alligator and realized I had misread the “8” for a “3.” Suddenly everything I’d been planning for my budget and her birthday took a nosedive.

Another example of best-laid plans . . .

When we lived overseas in Turkey, I got incredibly homesick and decided to fly back to America as a single parent because my husband didn’t have enough leave to join us. (Yes, that meant flying with three children under three years of age halfway across the world by myself. I won’t spend a lot of time going over the brilliance of this decision; it’s a moot point now.)

So not only did I manage to fly from Turkey to Germany and Germany to Baltimore and Baltimore to Fort Lauderdale with my kiddos, but I even decided to get really crazy when I arrived and join my brother and his family on a day trip to Disney World.

I know. What was I thinking?

You can plan for many things, but you can’t plan for four people getting a stomach bug while away from the country you live in. You can’t manage to pencil in violently throwing up yourself and then watching each of your children subsequently fall under the same spell.

This story makes me want to tell another story about flying. My military husband was told he couldn’t fly home with me to have our fourth child in an American hospital. This meant my almost thirty-six-week pregnant self and three children had to do it without him—Portugal all the way to Florida. Yeah, it was as bad as you can imagine. Especially when one of the flights had each of us assigned to a middle seat throughout the plane and no one wanted to fix the problem. (My big old belly managed to finally negotiate with fellow passengers.)

Of course, as a farmer and homeschooling mom of four children, the examples I could give you are never-ending. Let’s just discuss how plan-altering lice is—especially when you get it along with your children. Or the flu taking down one child at a time so that you’re stuck in your house for eight weeks straight. I mean, just planning on what you’re going to be teaching your children on any given day can be thrown out the window in a moment when a farm animal decides to escape its paddock.

If you’re a mother, I’m sure you have an abundance of your own stories about how one child getting sick or opinionated or strong-willed or tired has sent your entire family’s plans into a tailspin. But throw in forty sheep, ten ducks, two geese, a ton of turkeys, two dogs, over one hundred chickens, and some guinea fowl, and the stories get even more interesting.

The word plan is defined as a detailed proposal. It’s an intention. It’s a decision arranged in advance. It’s what you hope for. It’s what you think is going to happen. You might think you can go to Disney World instead of ending up in an emergency room, and you might want to spend a weekend away with friends but know they’ll kill you if you introduce lice into their bug-free life.

Proverbs 16:9 is my favorite Scripture about the fruitlessness of depending on plans: “In their hearts humans plan their course, but the Lord establishes their steps” (NIV).

I am a woman of my word. I follow through on my commitments. (This is why I bought the alligator and scrapped plans for a date night with my hubby to make it fit into the budget.) However, I’ve had to teach my children that even the vacation of the year can be derailed by something in life more important. A death in the family. Retirement plans scrapped when a spouse becomes ill. A college choice ruined by unexpected financial difficulties. A move across the country forced by the sudden loss of a job.

As you plan your life, remember that plans are just proposals. They’re what we think will happen. But in all his holiness, God tells us, “I know the plans I have for you…plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future” (Jeremiah 29:11 NIV).

That might mean you come home with an $88 stuffed alligator. But remember, the Lord establishes your steps.

Wendi Kitsteiner is a former city girl now living on a farm in the middle of nowhere, Tennessee with her husband and four young children. She is passionate about the causes of infertility, adoption, and keeping it real as a mom. You can follow her at flakymn.blogspot.com or becauseofisaac.org.