Adjusting the “My Plan”

by Claudia Barba

She stands on the building site of her life, blueprints in hand. She has been drawing them since she first held a crayon, and though they have been modified and refined over the years, they now are complete and highly detailed.

She rarely has to refer to them anymore, for they are deeply engraved in her mind. She knows (more or less) which perfect, handsome man she will marry and what sort of job he will have (with sufficient income, of course, to pay for the house she has already designed). She has planned how many attractive children she will have, at what intervals. They will be healthy, intelligent, talented, obedient children with flawless manners.

She was a little startled when her husband turned out to be in the ministry, but she soon incorporated that change into her blueprints. Their ministry, she decided, would be a model for others to copy. The congregation would love and follow their shepherd. She would be an ideal ministry wife, and at home, a modern Proverbs 31 woman. The entire community would rise and call her blessed. It was all right there in her blueprints.

But then the oddest thing happened. Building materials that she knew she had not ordered suddenly appeared on her life’s construction site, and with them the Master Builder began to erect a building around her that didn’t resemble her meticulous plans—not one little bit.

The house He raised is nothing like the dream house she had envisioned, and nowhere near the lot she had staked out. Despite her best efforts, it is often untidy. Its inhabitants have turned out to be defective (including herself, to her surprise and dismay). Some of the sheep are wandering and blaming it on the shepherd. People call her all the time, but have yet to call her blessed.

At first, she was simply startled, certain that if she drew God’s attention to His errors, He’d correct them.  She held up her blueprints: “Ummmm . . . I believe you may have made a few mistakes. See, according to my plans. . .” But the Builder just smiled gently and continued building, following His own flawless, higher thoughts and ways, constructing a life that didn’t conform to her plans at all.

Bewildered and frustrated, she now has a choice to make. She can live a joyless martyr’s life in her unwelcome abode, grimly accepting her dismal fate, silently indulging self-pity. Or she can plop down and pout, sticking out her lip, complaining bitterly to anyone who will listen—including the Builder. Or she can shake her fist at Him and stomp off in fury to construct her own life according to her own blueprints. (And He may allow her to go, but then send leanness to her soul.)

There’s one more possibility, of course, and that’s what she decides to do. After one last, longing look at her beloved blueprints, she calmly and deliberately tears them up. As the shreds blow away, so does her unhappiness. She turns and walks contentedly into her house—the house that God built. And there she lives, happily ever after.