I love to plan. Plan vacations. Plan nights with friends. Plan for what I’m going to teach… I’ve always liked planning and organizing. But boy, have my plans changed. 

I never planned to get pregnant 4 months into marriage. Never planned to live in California without Brandon. Never planned to stay at home and not teach (though I may have wanted to). Never planned to have a single income household. Never planned for my daughter to need a heart transplant. After all, how do you plan for life’s biggest challenges? But as I sit here and think about all the things I never planned for, Jeremiah 29:11 comes barreling in like a freight train. “For I KNOW the plans I have for you.” Who knows this? God. Who planned this? God. God knew this would be in my future plans, and He made sure I was with the right people to weather this storm. If I stop to wonder “why?” (which I stopped doing about 5 days into this journey) it would be so easy to get angry. But I can honestly say I’ve never been mad at God for any of this. Why? Because He showed up in the biggest way I’ve ever experienced. You were all here for the journey, haven’t you seen it? 

It’s still hard to plan these days. Going out is much harder, as we have to plan around Emerson’s medications. Planning a vacation is much harder knowing we need to drive rather than fly. Even planning the future is hard, because it could mean any number of things for us. So instead we plan for the here and now. Of course we have things we try to plan and look forward to, but know all those plans can change in an instant. 

Later the book continues “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, and my ways are not your ways.” This is certainly not the way I envisioned parenting, but this is how God planned for my journey as a mom to be. I can only hope I continue to put those ways first and not my own. This is part of the control of situations I struggle with. Sometimes (a lot of times) my way is not the best. But darn it will I go down fighting if I think I am. Pretty sure anyone who knows me well can attest to that. I think it’s part of this attribute that helped me be such an advocate for Emerson in the hospital. I needed to be tough, I needed to be strong, and I needed to trust my instincts. But through each situation that arose, God showed His way, and sometimes at night I reflected on it and just heard the gentle whisper of “Trust me. I’ve got this.”

We have learned so much in this new season of our life. Not only medically speaking, but what it means to put something 100% in God’s hands. God’s had us and held us the entire way, and know whatever the future holds, God has the plan.