No One Planned for This

I received my crisp, freshly-bound Golden Coil planner in the mail recently.  It’s empty pages spanning from August to July, as my life revolves around the school year.  (There is nothing quite like getting a new planner.)

Plans–I love them. 

School events.  
Appointments.  
To-do lists.  
Date nights.  
Girls nights. 
Vacations.

I love the structure and the order of a good plan–a definite beginning and end. 

I love the joy of completing a task, of creating an experience. 

I love the sense of accomplishment of checking items off of my to-do list. (Sometimes, I even write things down I have already done just so I can check it off.)

And yet today, I look at my beautiful new planner–blank and inviting–and the excitement that typically comes with plans for a new school year fell flat.  

For the first time, there are no lists of school events.  No vacations planned.  No football schedule to write down.  No community event to get dressed up for.  

I look at my planner, afraid to write anything down in pen and hesitant to look past the week before me.

2020. No one planned for this.

Illness.  Death.  Financial hardship.  Civil and political unrest.
Quarantine.  Masks.  Social distancing.  Working from home.  

I feel anxious.  Sometimes sad.  Overwhelmed.  Ironically when we need hugs and smiles the most, they’re gone.

 I long for order, consistency, stability. 

And yet, as I contemplate my life and the years leading up to 2020, the unexpected has always managed to find its way in.  So, truth be told, there is a lot in my life I have not planned. Even in the midst of my planning, when I thought I was in control, I really wasn’t. 

As I look through the empty pages of my new planner, I think about the future.  

What do I know for sure? 

• I know that I am changed.  2020 and the few years leading up to it, have changed me.

• I have come to understand that life can be more than moving from one thing to the next. Between the beginning and the end, there can be joy too. 

• The unexpected will happen; and it can refine you. 

• An empty planner does not mean an empty life–it means stillness.  It means rest.  It means time.  It means one day at a time.  One week at a time.  Quiet.  In the silence, He is there.

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

I know the plans, He says. He knows the plans.  And that is enough. 

So, I open my blank and beautiful planner.  The quote I chose to be printed in the beginning of my planner is staring back at me.

“What would be the point of living if we didn’t let life change us?” – Carson, Downton Abbey

Indeed, Carson–sounds like a plan.