Things Never Go As Planned: Mid-Week Reflection

EMILY RUTLEDGE, YOUTH MINISTER

When life doesn’t go as planned.

I am beginning to feel there should be a special season in the church year when we lament, discuss, and reflect on the ways that life just doesn’t ever end up as we have planned. Disease, divorce, death… failure, finances, family… careers, campouts, cooking.

From the biggest to the smallest things in life sometimes watching our projected outcome fall painfully short of reality rattles us to the core. I often find, for myself, it is the smallest upsets that dredge up the most grief. It’s when I burn the cookies that my sorrow about a life-altering disappointment bursts forth. We have an amazing ability as a people to compartmentalize and move on from tragedy. Sometimes we trick ourselves into thinking because we were able to show up to work or school the next day and function on some level of normal that the wound is healed.

But here is the real secret: We can be broken as hell and still do the next thing we have to do.

I have a cousin who is a distance runner and when I was training for a big race and struggling with hip pain he told me that each race is about something. There is never a perfect race. It’s a mental thing, a physical ailment, the weather, or a broken shoe, there is never a race without an issue; no matter how well you prepare.

Well, that truth stinks.

And is still truth.

Naming it did a lot for me. It didn’t take me to some enlightened level that allowed me to own my pain and name it freely when feeling it. I still cry about my grandmother’s death when I burn cookies or about my inability to pass any kind of important exam the first time when I unsuccessfully teach my child to ride a bike. Life is one big string of ‘things not going as planned’ stitched together with love and community and grace and reconciliation.

It’s the stitching together where God works but we often like to blame Her for the falling apart. It’s in the friend who cries with you out of pure love and empathy. It’s in the casserole that shows up when the newborn can’t stop crying and you can’t wear pants with buttons. It’s in the Eucharist each week that is placed in your hand reminding you that even our God lived a life of ‘not as planned’ but that the pain and beauty work together for unimaginable good. It’s in the owning of our brokenness and our need for each other more than for a perfect life.

In Jeremiah 29:11 we are told “I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.” I think we can all call nonsense on that verse standing alone… it’s the second part of Jeremiah’s advice and a little context that reminds us that this ‘things not going as planned’ has been going on for God’s people a long time. Jeremiah tells the exiled citizens of Jerusalem (who did not plan to live 500 miles from home) he is writing to, “build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters.” In other words, y’all are going to be in exile a while, make yourselves comfortable. There is good down the road but don’t expect it tomorrow, go on with life as it is now, where you are, exactly as you didn’t plan.

There is never a perfect race, no matter how hard your train. There is never a perfect life no matter how hard you pray or how much you hope or how well you are educated or how closely you follow the rules… but there is lots of grace and love and redemption along the way. Find your joy there.