Plan B: Are You Ready?

Long ago I had a Plan A. I had no idea way back then, just how much Plan A would not ever be.

True Story Ahead

Plan A:  When I grew up, I wanted to be a famous pianist! I came to the realization that wasn’t going to happen when I could barely stretch my little hands to reach an octave on the piano. My piano teacher rewrote many songs to accommodate my little fingers. There were no four-note chords for these little hands. I could barely do three-note chords.

Each person has a Plan A. Ask any young child. They’ll tell you their Plan A.

About the time we figure out Plan A isn’t going to happen exactly like we’d hoped, we start looking into Plan B or C or D or E. You get the gist.

Personally, I think I’ve gone through the alphabet of plans: A through Z. Actually, that kind of makes me smile tonight.

You see, I told my husband I was going to write a blog post tonight. I haven’t written in over two weeks. I’m not feeling good about that, but I had no plan.

While I ate my English muffin topped with peanut butter and banana supper, Bob asked me, “So what are you going to write about tonight?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, no pressure there, huh?”

It’s not that I hadn’t thought about it. There’s lots going on in the world: hate, solar eclipse, back-to-school sales. But I decided on the way home from work all those topics were flooding all media sources today, so why jump on the bandwagon.

Instead, I sat down at my little desk in the corner of our bedroom, turned on my computer, and stared at it. Then I thought, “I’ll write in my journal that I don’t know what to write about. Maybe that’ll help get me started.”

Here’s what I wrote verbatim:

6:20 p.m.
Okay, I’m going to write a blog post – but what?
Lord help!
I got nothing!
Do you?
I’m just going to sit quietly for a few minutes until I hear a direction from you.

I prayed. “Just tell me what you want me to write and I will.” I sat with my eyes closed, waiting. After a couple of minutes, I felt a prodding to look at my desk. I must have 20 post-it notes with ideas. I’m just not ready to write about those yet. They need to simmer for a while.

I wasn’t getting God’s direction I’d hoped for. But as my eyes scanned over the rectangle card table adjacent to my desk, an idea popped into mind.

Plan B:  Your powerful prayers rising strong, daring greatly the pursuit of God.

And there it was! This is what God wants me to write about tonight.

God’s Direction

Today, while at work, I thought about things I’m crazy passionate about. I know God wants me to write about those things. He reminded me tonight in the most profound way what that is.

My Plan A wasn’t God’s Plan A for me. Plan B, on the other hand, well, I think it says it all for me. Plus, my little hands can easily accomplish this plan, no rewriting of chords necessary.

Here’s a really cool thing about God’s direction for my writing tonight. I created my Plan B sentence in about a millisecond using just the titles of books I’m currently reading for the first time, reading again for the second or third time, or I’m about to read.

God sure does speak to us in crazy ways some times. I rather like that about Him. 🙂

Plan B

I can hardly wait to see what develops from Plan B. By the way, I’m intentionally living Plan B.

Here’s another cool thing about Plan B. It can be your plan too. We can all have powerful prayers rising strong. We can all dare greatly the pursuit of God. We can be bold. We can be brave. We can pray powerful prayers. We can rise strong. We can all live Plan B if we want to.

Maybe this profound compilation of book titles in a sentence needs to simmer for a while to truly get the most flavor from it. After all, that’s what one of my post-it notes says: “Simmer.”

While we let God’s direction simmer, let’s devote ourselves to prayer with an alert mind and a thankful heart (Colossians 4:2). I guarantee if you do, you’ll officially begin Plan B.