Last week didn’t go as I planned. My usual plan for the week is to work here at the paper two mornings, go to the gym two mornings, and do as I please the rest of the time, which usually means I’m out a lot.
But by noon last Monday I had to scrape ice and snow off my windshield just to see enough to slip and slide home from the office. As a precaution, we had quickly finished a shortened paper before we left, which was good because I couldn’t have gotten back up the icy roads to work Tuesday anyway. I didn’t leave home again until Friday. None of this fit my plans, which included getting some things done and staying warm!
We should have been used to changes in our plans after nearly a year of COVID-19. Almost everything we planned to do this year got cancelled, from trips to church events to family visits because of the fear of being infected.
In fact, after the life I’ve lived, I should know that plans are made to be changed.
As a teenager, I assumed that after high school I would continue my education in California, probably at UCLA. I planned to work in advertising or to be a psychologist. I had sort of a hazy idea that my husband would be an architect. Because I had “planned” all this, I assumed that it would come to pass as I envisioned.
None of those plans came to pass.
On a trip to Mississippi to visit relatives between high school and college, I developed a strong desire to live here in the South. I came to Ole Miss first, then transferred to Delta State--another change of plans. The study of psychology began to seem like too much shifting sand, and I changed my major to secondary English education. I never even met an architecture student, so my plan of marrying one was looking dim.
After I married a banker instead of an architect, I planned to live forever in the town we first landed in, Marks, Miss. Then we got jobs in West Point, Miss., and I planned to grow old there. Then we moved to Magee 42 years ago and bought burial plots in Magee City Cemetery. But I won’t put any bets even on staying long enough to get buried out there. I know too much about plans going awry.
I’ve learned a few things about planning along the way. Mainly, I’ve learned that we are not in control of our lives.
Oh, we can influence our lives to a degree. Getting an education helps in getting a job, but it doesn’t insure it. Marrying a reasonably nice person whose mother brought him up right helps life go more smoothly. Obeying the law helps you stay out of the slammer, but these days, who knows? I see the day when a person could be jailed for saying--or just thinking--something politically incorrect.
It is man’s arrogance to believe that we control life on earth, or that we--who can’t even keep our power on during a snow storm-- can control the earth and its progress.
But last week we tried to plan for the winter storm anyway. We got our generator out and located what was left of our “pandemic stash.” including a lot of toilet paper. We had power! We had paper! We were in control of this ice storm!
But our house is all electric, and our power went out Wednesday. Our small generator can only power a few things at a time, our propane logs sputtered and scared us so we turned them off and slept in the cold, and our electric water heater quit heating water.
We didn’t get mail for most of the week, which meant we didn’t get things we had ordered and couldn’t mail payments on bills that were due. My husband couldn’t pay the online bills because the internet went out at one point. With all our planning, we were dead in the water.
People are wise, of course, to plan some things, to try to avoid total chaos. We are smart to plan our days so that we are productive, to plan possible approaches to problems we see developing, to plan ways to meet anticipated needs.
But the biggest thing we need to learn to plan for is loss of control. Things will happen that we can’t plan for or control. Though it’s hard, we need to get comfortable with being out of control and practice not being upset when things don’t go as planned. Maybe things aren’t “going wrong,” they just weren’t supposed to go as we planned.
The Bible says, “Don’t say, ‘Tomorrow we will go into such a city and continue there a year and buy and sell and get gain; you know not what shall be on tomorrow.... You ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that.’”
There is a higher power, mightier than you, who is in charge of planning life on earth. His power never goes off. You need to plan to meet Him.
I think that’s the reminder we were supposed to get from last week’s storm.
