Plans? Bwahahaha! I Laugh at Your Plans!

Ever feel like life mocks your plans?

All summer I’ve felt this way.  As a homeschooling mom, I don’t have a lot of time during the school year to do the projects that are near and dear to my heart, so I look forward to the spring and summer months to get crafty, handy, and garden-y. I had grand plans to have our entire downstairs repainted by this point. But we have only one room done. And that was because my husband and I already painted it together over a long weekend this winter.

I also planned to catch up on my children’s scrapbooks, which I have not worked on seriously since we have moved to our new house. Of course, it’s not so new anymore. We moved here when my youngest was three months old.

He just turned nine.

But life has a way of foiling my personal plans. Life, and family. When this post is published on Wednesday morning, we will be headed to our county 4-H Center for the first day of judging at the 4-H Fair. My kids are showing lesser-known 4-H projects, including photography, drone technology, and computer programming, along with woodworking.  My husband and I have been leading our kids through some parts of these activities, though my teenagers are quite capable of doing 90 percent of the work themselves. But there’s always display boards to create and presentations to prepare, which moms are good at tweaking.

Those are the expected interruptions, I suppose, but they always take more time than one expects.

Then there are the unexpected interruptions (or plan crushers, you could call them). For example, just as I was recently headed to sit down at the sewing machine to create some lovely outdoor pillow covers, my daughter informed me that she suspected one of our chickens was egg-bound, meaning the poor thing had a sort of impacted egg that she couldn’t lay.

Ten minutes later found me inserting my gloved finger into her nether regions to determine if an egg was stuck. Thankfully, for both the hen and myself, there was not. But there would be no sewing that day for me. And I had added one more thing to my list of Things I Never Thought I Would Do and Never Want to Do Again.

One part of me gets extremely stressed by the constant interruptions to my plans. But the other side of me (I suspect it’s the Holy Spirit) nudges the first side and says, “But wasn’t it wonderful to laugh with your son with because of your shared nerdy humor while you worked on his programming presentation? Wasn’t it so much fun to take pictures with your daughter and share something you both love?”

Yes, indeed. These are not interruptions, but blessings. My time is not my own, but God’s. My selfish plans may get set aside for the short term, but they are replaced with activities of eternal value.

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For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. – Jeremiah 29:11

As for me, I am in your hands; do with me whatever you think is good and right. – Jeremiah 26:14

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven. – Ecclesiastes 3:1