I love Michigan. I love that we have seasons. I love a good crisp fall day, and wonderfully warm spring morning. I love torrential downpours and summer thunderstorms as much as I love snow days and windy, winter blizzards. Living here allows us to have the unexpected right around the corner. I have to admit, it’s what I like the most about this place. The fact that there can also be warm fall nights, and 60 degree December days makes it worth the spring freezes and 45 degree July nights. Michigan’s forecast tries to be “accurately predicted” but that seems like an oxymoron doesn’t it?
So often I try to accurately predict what the day, week, or year is going to look like. I have a schedule. I make plans. I do my best to make things happen in the way, and in the time that I want. And, it makes me happy when the plan is kept.
Laundry gets done on Monday, groceries on Tuesday, floors done on Wednesday, etc. No one is sick, not one homework assignment is late, and all the work appointments are kept; that is a perfectly perfect week.
No. Nope. Never. It seems like there is not one week that turns out like that well laid plan up there.
But, we get through it. We press on to another week. With the same plans and the same schedule, we wake up Sunday and cross our fingers that this week is gonna be perfectly perfect. Of course, it’s not! And suddenly, the week isn’t planned anymore; you just hope it’s “accurately predicted” like the Michigan seasons!
Illness rears it’s ugly head. Infertility keeps you from moving forward. Unemployment halts you in your tracks. Even good things, like a dream job offer with questionable timing or a surprise pregnancy that changes everything, throw us off our carefully plotted course.
I am pretty sure this is where the choice is ours. Where we get to make a decision.
We can continue with our plans. We can force our way and keep the schedule. We can complain and feel out of control when it doesn’t happen in our way, or in our time. We can put a stop to everything, draw a line in the sand, and say that until that perfectly perfect schedule is kept we will not move forward.
Or…
We can choose to trust. We can choose joy. We can make the choice, that no matter what comes our way our only option is to love. To love the life we have been given. To love the people in our path. To embrace what lies before us, and love the unplanned interruptions.
I want to chose what keeps me moving forward. The one that puts me in the middle of God’s plan for my life, and has me wrapped up in His grace and safe in His arms. I am pretty sure that means I have to go the love route. That I have to trust. I am pretty sure that means giving up my way and losing control. I am pretty sure that means embracing the the oxymorons of this life and going forward in love and with His timing.
Wow, that is going to be hard!!! This week choosing happy means letting go of the plans and the schedules; even if that means sitting outside in a sweatshirt in the middle of July.
Consider the Birds... 