ANSWERED PRAYERS, part 2
by
I am so often reminded, that God’s ways are not my ways.
My week last week was literally a blur, as the first week of May usually is. We have many family birthdays in May, mine included, as well as Mother’s Day and all of the end of the school year and end of winter, events. May is a busy month. I always joke that I am going to leave town during May and return sometime in the middle of June. May is always a high allergy month as well, sapping me of energy. I find myself walking around in a fog, looking for the closest place where I can lay down and go to sleep.
All week I enjoyed so many wonderful times with friends and family, a special visit from my son in Phoenix and my two grandsons and a bonus gift from God—a visit from someone estranged whom I love so dearly. There were other activities and meetings on top of the usual celebrations, and I kept in my mind that the following Monday I would have a free day to catch up on much needed rest as well as the urgency of contacting my publisher to order books to be shipped to the upcoming Iowa book tour and preparing the talks for the various speaking venues.
Then came the call, “Can you babysit for the day Monday?” Well, of course, these are my precious grandchildren. I already had plans for a luncheon for Monday but managed to squeeze both in just fine. While at lunch, came the second call, “Can you come pick up Brooke? Paul’s doctor is sending him to the ER; his MRI results showed that he had a stroke.” I returned home, managed to get Brooke and waited, now with four children, for the phone call from the hospital. The phone call came—they are airlifting him to Barrow in Phoenix. My 36 year old nephew had had a stroke! Unimaginable! The following day I headed off to Phoenix to wait for the results with the rest of the family. He had a stroke, but “coincidentally” the clot did not take the usual path which would have done severe damage; instead it took a path that only caused minimal damage. He can recover. There are no coincidences with God. We all know that.
And so, I had prayed for a free day to catch up on other “important” things, but God had other plans. Those “other” plans might have thrown me for a loop in years gone by, but now I see that they are not “other” plans at all—they are God plans, which happen to intersect with my own. I can become irritable that my plans have changed, and I can become panicky that the very important things I had planned are postponed, or I can choose to see that if God’s plans interfere with my own—whose plans do I really need to engage in? Above the line—in the big “eternal realm” where the big picture is always happening, God was working out something intricately delicate—an answer to another prayer—one which I have wept and cried out to Him so often.
It is now Friday morning. I am just now going to begin the plans that I had for Monday, and I think that my urgency about Monday’s plans have not been His urgency at all. Amazing. When you give Him permission to walk out His life through you, be prepared for just about anything.
Go ahead and release it all to Him, He is working all the time on the details.
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