'God does not have a Plan B for your life... He only ever has a new Plan A.' Pete Greig
When the Plan A you thought was for the rest of your life ends, what can you do?
Grief will not be thwarted so incorporate it. It sucks but it's the way through. You feel like you can't get up - can't new life just come to you and skip this horrible adjustment? But get up you must, as life in its mercy is relentless. There are groceries to be bought and children to be fed and money to be earned.
Waiting with expectancy for God's new Plan A means keeping your heart open as best you can (and giving yourself a break when you can't.) It requires a kindness to and a patience with yourself when you keep shrinking like a snail at the touch of a blade of grass.
This new Plan A won't be dropping out of the sky - when does God ever do that? Nor - evidently - is it likely to be noticeable in any real form in a week or a month or even a year. It must be waited for (which doesn't mean it's not beginning to form.)
'See I am doing a new thing, do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.'
God whispers it to us and, in my experience, there are many times when I don't or can't see the new thing. I'm just keeping going. I remind myself that just because I can't see it doesn't mean God's plan isn't forming beyond my sight. When has God let me down?
I have acted "as if" it's forming, and choosing life. Some days I have managed that, other days I've thought stuff it. That's OK, I'm allowed - as are you. That's what grace and mercy are for.
How do I choose life? I plant the bulbs, do the laundry, make the dinner, write the card, enjoy the cartoon, weed the yard, laugh when I want to, cry when I must, sleep as much as I can, compliment the cashier - LIVE. Because this time is valuable. This unknowing time. This crap time. This time when I have felt like I don't have skin and I have felt so unbearably naked.
Now several years into God's new Plan A, I can tell you this. Those tiny life choices to just get on with it, like snowflakes, gather over time. On their own, no huge impact. Over time?
A new view.
jsg/march 2019