Plan.

Today is Saturday.  Saturday is a good day, isn't it?  Every day is a good day, I hope that you know I'm just kidding around, but Saturday is the cushiony day where you can sometimes sleep in or be as busy as you want.  It's your call.  When I was a youngun I looked forward to Disney's One Saturday Morning.  PepperAnn was some cool stuff.  And Recess.  Oh Recess.  My family has this tradition where we always make a big breakfast.  And by "we" I mean my parents.  Ha ha.  This morning I had the honor of test-driving some pretty radical gluten-free pancakes.  Be jealous.  Then, the day is usually jam-packed...time with friends, ultimate frisbee, kids at games & concerts & IMEA & practices & at friends houses & babysitting, yardwork, or maybe work work.  I love going to the farmer's market on Saturdays, and taking long walks, even if it's in the snow.  The dogs I live with like Saturdays because it means a guaranteed trip to "Bark Park", a six (or so) acre strech of grassy goodness to frollick and spring upon.  They're Springers, in case you didn't know.  They like to spring.  Today was kind of nippy, or so the cool coming from my window tells me, so I really have no idea what might have happened on this day because I still think that it's fall outside, when I really hear that winter is fast approaching.  No ultimate frisbee, I assume.

To make the variable even greater, the night falls now at like, 4:00pm.  It seriously starts getting dark then, if you didn't know.  I contemplate every evening why we still practice Daylight Savings Time.  Why?  Once it gets dark, I always think about what people around the world are doing right now.  It's this funny thing I do all the time.  I started doing it when my dad came home from Malaysia some fifteen years ago, and talked about how people half-way around the world are "sleeping right now."  Technically, half of the world is asleep at any given moment.  Some people are resting this evening in Illinois.  And Wiscosin.  Most members of my household are already asleep!  It's ten Post Meridien people!  Others in my household are watching movies.  (Personally, I think Netflix stinks.)  Still others are out and about, hopping from place to place.  Flights back to Dallas, babysitting, Irish Dancing, finishing up presentations, or dumping my pee in the "real toilet" (for you, Dad.) 

Saturdays are good days, but they sometimes hold unexpected things.  There isn't always a routine for Saturdays, like there might be during the week.  For some people, they like routine, and Saturdays might hold one for them.  Me, I'm pretty flexible.  Let me just say that I've cried and cried in my lifetime about not being enough of a planner, but flexibility really comes in handy when both of your crurals are out of order.  (Look crural up.  It's good word.)  Plans are always changing and evolving, especially in my family.  I think it's just the nature of a family of six.  Seven or eight depending on the day.  Six peoples schedules are all trying to smush together at one time, and it just gets nuts.  Luckily, one persons schedule is out of order, but the other five are still INSANE.  Only one uses Google Calendar.  And this one is convinced that it will solve all of our scheduley problems.  But no one else believes this person.  Poor person.  They are so singled out.

The plans for today went differently than I had imagined in my head.  I pictured: wake up early, have breakfast, visit with friends, have lunch with aunt from Dallas and my peeps, aka chill with family, go to cool performance with sibling and woman who gave birth to me, come home, go to church, read, watch a movie, blog, go to bed.  It didn't quite happen that way though.  The morning ran a little later than I had anticipated which made me nervous, and I ended up having to stay home for the evening because of timing and traffic and the inability to get into a car.  I can't read these days because I'm so tired all the time, and I fell asleep, which I hate because I wake up, and I'm like Oscar the puffy-faced Grouch for the rest of the night and no one wants to be by me.  And, I always go to bed way later than I want to. 

I have a secret: I'm really a planner.  Yikes.  I don't like it when accidents happen.  I don't like falling asleep when I don't want to, or missing out on time with people or God.  As much as I don't want to admit it, I don't think I am as flexible as I think I am.  I'm not as against-the-current as I imagine myself being.  Weird, huh.  I want to be different; this is a desire that many, many people have, but when you look at "people" in general, it's hard to be different.  We're all people.  And we all want to be different. 

To continue with my "lessons from a movie" streak, I have a hybrid tonight.  I watched "October Sky" this evening, and I watched "Elizabethtown" this afternoon.  If you haven't seen either of them, I think they're really, really great movies.  I'm trying to only watch one movie a day, but I had extra time by myself this evening, and it was either watch a movie or fall asleep again.  Poop on that.  No way I'm falling asleep again. 

Anyway, we have had October sky for forever, I remember when it first came out.  I was probably 12 or 13, and it made a huge impression on me.  It's actually one of the reasons I wanted to become a teacher.  Laura Dern is so inspring in the movie, and so beautiful, and Jake Gyllenhaal is a hunk.  In the movie, Jake's character, Homer, doesn't want to be a coal miner like the rest of the townspeople.  He and his friends "know" that it's their "destiny" to one day mine coal, but they put it off as long as they can.  One day, Homer sees Sputnik shooting through the evening sky, and he catches this vision.  A vision for building a rocket, and sending it into space.  He knows nothing about how to do it, but just jumps in and starts building.  The boys make major headway (after many, many failures) until his dad gets hurt.  Homer has to start working in the coal mine to help his family.  He starts to settle; he finally wins his father's approval, but his teacher is furious, his friends are leary, and he starts to let go of his vision.  His destiny seems to come to fruition.  (I won't spoil the ending, but he isn't stuck in the mine for long & he ends up work for something that starts with an "N" and ends with ASA.  Do you think he planned on that?)

In Elizabethtown, the main character (also a hunk), fails miserably on a shoe design, costing his company close to a billion dollars.  He contemplates suicide, but ends up finding out that his dad, from Kentucky, has died.  In his travels, he meets this girl, and she helps him to find the positive side of things.  My favorite line in the movie is where she tells him, "You failed" about twenty times in a row, but she does it with such honesty and grace and love.  He decides to admit and the discard the failure, rather than dwelling on it forever.  Do you think he planned on that?

You see, I can connect to both stories.  I want to be someone who makes a difference in the lives of others.  I'm just coming out and saying it - straight up.  That is my desire.  I think it causes me to wrestle though with my failure and with my pride and with my future, and with my insecurities and with the plans I've made.  These things have been heavy on my heart for several days now.  Dreams.  Vision.  Grace.  Journey.  Fear.  Humility.  Jobs.  Plans.  Over and over again, I keep thinking about the future, and sometimes I worry.

Both of these movies brought to mind this verse:  "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.  Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you."  Jeremiah 29:11-12

The first verse is highly quoted, and sometimes a little redundant (for people like me anyway who hear something many times, and forget what it means), but I wanted to share it anyway.  It's one I've been seeing a lot in the cards I've received, and it has new meaning tonight.  God has plans for our lives.  Every single person on the earth, he has a plan for.  The hard part is that we have to work at understanding what that plan is, and accept the challenges and blessings that come with it.  The second part of the verse is much less familiar...I didn't know that part by heart.

Over and over again in Scripture, we see where Jesus calls out to his Father, sometimes in the middle of a fierce discussion with the religious leaders or others around him.  He's constantly tuning his heart to that of the Father, and so, in turn, his plans are in tune as well.  He listens to his Father.  I mean, think about it.  Jesus was a wanderer, but he was never lost.  He always always always had direction in his life.  He always knew what he needed to do.  He knew where he needed to go.  Why?  The Father had a plan.  The best part is that Jesus went.  Without any hesitation.  He listened to his Father.

Part of the reason that all of those "things" weigh so heavy on my heart and mind is because I'm not doing a very good job of listening.  It's so hard.  Sometimes I think I just don't know how.  I mean, I can barely keep my thoughts in one place at any given time.  It's fairly ridiculous actually.  Please pray for me, that I would tune my heart to the Father's voice & that I can focus on hearing him in the coming weeks.  I don't know that I believe in destiny, or predestination - I don't know enough about them to say.  I don't like failure, and trying over and over again is hard.  I can be pretty faint-hearted.  What I do know is that I need to be a better listener & to continue being honest with God.  I want to know his plan.  Trusting that the Lord knows what he's doing at all times is very difficult because we have to surrender control, being still & knowing that He is God.

Jesus said, “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.” when he was about to give up his life.  I struggle with how to cast vision for my life, and still stay in tune with God.  This demeanor is one that I long for - complete and utter surrender.  Jesus followed God's plan.  Ultmately, he had to surrender his life in an extremely humble way, knowing that in the end he would die.  That was God's plan.  And yet, Jesus submitted to it.  Just like always.  But God's plan was to use that to redeem an entire race: humans.  I'm so thankful that Jesus followed God's plan, even in the pain and hurt because I am blessed by that decision.  Watching the process helps me to trust in God's plan, remember to call on him, go and pray to him, and give everything, every plan...and he will listen.  My job is to listen right back.