Perusing my planner is like a form of therapy for me. I love planning. I love calendar squares (I’m a paper girl), and blank spaces (and an introvert), and scheduling out school years and Bible studies and populating those pages with neat-and-tidy plans.
Of course the actual days ahead aren’t neat-and-tidy at all, but I still enjoy the process.
Over the last few months, I’ve been meditating on a shift in mindset that just might be what keeps us sane, and, Lord willing, faithful and effective, in the days and years to come:
Shifting from PLANNING to PREPARING.
Perhaps this is already clear to you, but just in case this might be helpful to someone, I’ll bear the risk of stating the obvious:
In late pregnancy, my midwives asked me to create a Birth Plan. This is a standard practice for every expecting Mama—creating a document that outlines your desires for the birth process, so that all the care providers can reference it and carry out your wishes.
With my first two births, I didn’t do this, because quite frankly, I didn’t care what happened. I wasn’t prepared at all, so I sort of threw myself at the mercy of my midwives and doctors, and decided that whatever happened was okay with me. Thankfully, everything went fine, and I honestly think God graciously gave me a pretty easy experience because He knew I couldn’t have handled anything more. Not kidding—I was so unprepared!
So that’s one philosophy: Skip the planning, skip the preparing, throw up your hands and say, “What will be will be!” or “It is what it is!” and celebrate your own indifference.
We see this at work in permissive parenting—really relaxed parents with really wild children. It’s cool and all that Mom’s so chill, but everyone around them wishes she wasn’t quite so laid back!
See, this mindset exalts flexibility above all, and while it’s certainly more attractive than white-knuckled control, it also falls short of walking out God’s good plans.
On the other extreme, you have the hard-core planners. The Birth Plan is a blow-by-blow uber-detailed document that outlines everything from the temperature of the room to how many candles should be lit and what volume the Enya music should play. I’m joking, of course, but we can go pretty hog wild planning out our perfect birth!
This parenting style seeks to control everything—from the kids’ environment to their every bite of food to what they wear, etc. While this can work for awhile, eventually that outward control will be eliminated, and these kids haven’t been prepared to make their own wise choices in the world.
When I followed my midwives’ orders and wrote my document, I titled it, “My Birth Requests” and I chose to only write out things that were reasonable responses to various scenarios. I’ll admit, part of it was hard to do—I didn’t want to specify which hospital to transfer me to, in case of emergency, but the reality is emergencies happen, so rather than try to control every outcome, or ignore the possibility of undesirable outcomes, I could prepare my heart, mind, and caregivers for what was ahead.
As I shared in the birth story, I found that Psalm 131 was what brought out a critical shift in my mind: A switch from PLANNING for this birth and baby, to PREPARING.
By God’s grace, I feel like I went into the event prepared, which involved tossing all my plans out the window and choosing to focus on the one thing I could control: My own self.
My mind. My heart. My perspective.
We see this at play all the time in life. How many dozens of times have Jeff and I counseled couples,
“Don’t just plan a wedding, PREPARE for marriage.”
We can plan nursery color schemes and birth plans, or we can prepare to be parents.
We can make grand retirement plans, or we can prepare for the unknowns of the future.
As I look around I see several examples of people doing this well:
My parents: I guarantee you my Dad did not plan on spending his “free” years of retirement “stuck” at home as full-time caretaker for his disabled wife. The years when he has all the time and money he needs to travel and do whatever he wants, instead he is faithfully and humbly cooking and cleaning, caring for all her personal needs, sitting with her for hours on end as she tries to string together sentences, devoting his days, thousands of them, to her daily needs.
Why can he do this so well? Not because this was his plan.
Because he prepared. Because when he said, “I do,” he meant it. Because he counted the cost and has spent nearly 48 years making right choices to love and honor. He has, every day of his marriage, prepared his heart to be faithful, over and over and over and over.
This was not his plan, but he was prepared, and the result is a beautiful godly example of true love.
My dear friends whose daughter was tragically killed in a car accident. Of course that horrific situation was not their plan. But they were able to respond with supernatural grace, forgiveness, and love, they were able to weather this horrendous storm, because their hearts were prepared. How?
The preparation of the gospel of peace (Eph. 6:15).
Every time we meditate on the gospel, re-tell our hearts the gospel, re-learn the gospel, re-focus on the gospel, every time we choose to live and think in line with the gospel, we prepare ourselves for the future that only God can see.
This is so much more than just “plan for the best, prepare for the worst.”
This is a complete reorientation of our lives, minds, hearts, around the truth of who Jesus is and what He’s done for us, so that what naturally comes out of us is strength, grace, patience, forgiveness, love, kindness, endurance.
This is becoming like Jesus so that when your cross comes, you can respond like Him.
“‘Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.'” (Luke 23:34)
“He opened not His mouth.” (Isaiah 53:7)
“When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly.” (1 Peter 2:23)
This is so much more beautiful than detached indifference or white-knuckled control. This is the preparation of the gospel of peace, this is how the Heavenly Father prepares His children for the future only He can see. This is refusing fear, denial, or mere positive-thinking. This is how the Proverbs 31 woman “laughs at the days to come.”(v. 25)
You too can have the uncanny ability to smile at the future, because you’ve let Christ prepare your heart. Confidence is yours.
{On this journey of the unknown, with you. Thanks for reading.}