Every day we try to do things our way. We set an alarm for when to wake up to have power over when we start our days. Sometimes the alarm doesn’t go off and we find that we have not made our own decision when to wake up.
We tell ourselves we’ll go to bed at a certain time but find ourselves falling asleep on the couch watching old reruns of the 1960s edition of Password that you found on YouTube (shout out to Mr. Ludden’s family in Mineral Point) thus giving up control of when and how we wanted to sleep.
We want to get to work at a certain time on a certain day but a potato truck has lost its wares on the interstate, backing up traffic for miles, and making you wonder why you bothered leaving home early anyway.
I could come up with dozens more hypothetical and ridiculous examples but I’m sure you have your own experiences with this concept.
You planned everything perfectly. You double-checked everything. You looked forward to the end result.
Others were looking forward to your plans also. You thought you had the best intentions and that they were truly good.
All that, and things still didn’t go the way you wanted them to.
What if your plans that failed were actually a success in God’s eyes?
Who’s in charge now?
Dealing with it and letting go
It can be incredibly frustrating when things don’t go our way.
These moments really test our maturity level sometimes.
Sinful actions can come from our reactions.
We say things we shouldn’t say. We think things we shouldn’t think. We do things we shouldn’t do. None of those things made anything better and our souls are in a worse spot than they were before we did wrong.
The Evil One laughs at and loves this. Whose will are you doing now?
I’m awful at handling it when things don’t go “my way”. I take it out on myself. That might seem better than taking it out on others (which I do also) but it’s not.
God didn’t create me to hate myself when things don’t go my way.
God created me to love Him and others when things go His way.
It’s easy for me to type this, fully well knowing there will be some instance today or later this week where I won’t think to think about this.
Not to lean into total pessimism, but we have to accept that everything we do is going to have some aspect of imperfection to it.
Why? Because we are imperfect.
Many married couples tell soon-to-be-married couples to “expect something will go wrong” — maybe something you hadn’t thought of going wrong.
We have to apply a lot of that thinking to our lives.
Not to be negative about everything but no matter how much we plan, say, or do, we’re not as good as we think we are.
God is good though.
All the time.
All the time, God is good.
Our plans will never be as good as His but maybe we can start piggybacking off of His plans — with LOTS of help of course.
What can we do?
I thought you’d never ask.
The answers will come as no surprise.
We can pray.
We can hope.
We can trust.
We can do our best.
We can make the best of any situation we find ourselves in.
We can try to take some actions to make things “better,” but be prepared to fail at them.
We can be grateful for what we have.
We can remember that no matter how many things are out of our control, all that matters is getting to Heaven.
“‘Tis better to have every one of your plans fail but still get to Heaven than to have a perfect day — according to your imperfect plans — and end up in the wrong place.” (Me, just now).
If you may discern so, how is your “Get to Heaven” scorecard coming along?
Make plans to get better at those things.
God will probably give you a lot of support in those areas.
But, be aware, planning on and performing Works of Mercy doesn’t guarantee they’ll go . . . according to your plans for them. God may have other plans for your time, talent, and treasure.
How do we know what to do?
Embrace the silence that can fully answer the question “What does God want me to do?”
Thank you for reading.
I’m praying for you.