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2007

9th July
Smells

2nd July
Smile

26th June
Waterlogged

11th June
Plans

6th June
Letters

21st May
Friends

May 9th
Stereotypes

May 1st
Broken

April 16th
Climbing hills

April 9th
The Three Trees

March 28th
Toby the SuperDog

March 19th
Mountains

March 4th
Lone Daffodil

February 26th
Working hours

February 19th
Memory

February 12th
Piercings

February 5th
Patience

January 29th
Surprise

January 22nd
Wind

January 15th
Honesty

January 8th
My Car

January 3rd
Happy New Year

Plans
11 June 2007 

Last week my friend came over for a visit. We had planned to have a nice lunch and then go out for a walk in the afternoon sunshine. As we spent time together we would chat and catch up on how our lives were going. It would be a lovely, relaxing, fun time together. Unfortunately the reality didn’t quite match up to our plans. 

I was getting ready for lunch when I got a distraught call from my friend. It seems her newly bought car was making noises it shouldn’t make. She was somewhere in Wakefield with a broken car and a mobile phone that was running out of battery. After working out her location I directed her to a nearby supermarket where she could park and wait for the breakdown people to look at the car, and off I went to meet her. Whilst waiting and waiting and waiting for the helpful mechanic we made use of the nearby McDonalds. Our lovely quiet lunch had turned into eating burgers sat on the floor of a car park! Not exactly what I’d had in mind! 

The mechanic eventually arrived and looked at the car, which had annoyingly stopped making the worrying noises. After all that waiting there was nothing he could do, and perhaps the rest of the afternoon we could catch up on the planed schedule, although the walk would have to be a little shorter than first envisioned. Except that as we drove back to my house the noise came back and this time with a vengeance!  

After another visit from the same breakdown guy and a towing to the nearest garage, we discovered that the brake pads were broken and in need of immediate attention. This meant more hanging around as they waited for the right parts to be delivered and then  the car could be fixed. I couldn’t believe it – by the time everything was sorted it was 5 o’clock, just one hour before I had to go to work. That wasn’t enough time for the leisurely walk I’d planned and it was now too late to go and get some coffee and cake as places were all shutting for the night. I was glad that my friend’s car was now safe enough for her to drive home in, but I couldn’t help but resent the fact that the afternoon I’d imagined in my head was not even close to the afternoon we actually experienced. Things had definitely not gone to plan.

When I was still at school I had a kind of plan for my life. I was going to get married when I was 24, because my mum and my nanny had both been 24 when they got married – I was going to continue the tradition! Now at 28 and still single, it hasn’t quite gone to plan! I was going to work in Africa digging wells (I think I saw it once on Blue Peter and thought it looked fun!) and yet here I am in Wakefield having nothing at all to do with water systems. I was going to be able to speak German fluently yet at times I struggle with being able to talk in understandable English, which is still the only language I know. Things haven’t exactly gone to plan.  

I am glad that some of my harebrained ideas and plans haven’t come to fruition – I mean at one time I wanted to be a teacher during the day and a nurse at night!! But on the other hand I still have a longing to go and dig wells somewhere in Africa, and who knows, maybe one day I’ll get there. The thing is that I have made a decision to defer the plan making, I’m leaving it up to Jesus.  

Any plans that I make are made with my limited knowledge. Any plans God makes are made with a vast eternity’s worth of knowledge, a greater understanding of not only my needs but also my skills and what I am capable of doing. But mostly they are plans made with love. I know that if I follow his call, if I allow him to direct my life then whatever happens, wherever I end up, it is going to be miles better than what I could have thought up. That’s not to say that his plans for us are full of smiles and laughter all the time – he seems to be under the impression that we best grow as people when things are hard and we are challenged (I would never have planned it that way!). But despite my inability to speak German and still being single past 24, I have seen, I have done, I have experienced so much more than I could ever have dreamed, and I wouldn’t change it for anything.  

It makes me think that if I am seemingly so willing to let Jesus direct my life, on the big stuff at least – job type, home location, marital status – then why not let him get involved in the smaller, everyday things? I think back to my day with my friend. We didn’t get to do any of the things we had wanted to, yet with all the waiting for mechanicy people, we had the chance to natter about all sorts of things. We had a meal together, albeit not in the ideal location, but we ate and shared fellowship, and once we got past the worry of a broken car, we actually had fun together. I am not saying that we should never make plans, that we shouldn’t have ideas of what we want to achieve in life, but maybe we should refocus our gaze from the destination to be able to see the journey we are on. 

So the next time you plan a nice afternoon with a friend, remember to have the number of a garage close at hand – you never know what might happen!