House on the Rock

(Disclaimer: In a perfect world I would have posted this last night, thereby justifying the choice of title, but seeing as though it is one day later and I am still 27, I decided to keep it. Read on.)

I made a sticky-note wishlist of my ideal birthday agenda: it fell on a Monday, Joe’s off-day from work. If everything went according to plan, I’d wake up before both boys and slip quietly out the door to the closest Starbucks. Laptop, Bible, and journal in tow, I’d spend an hour or two sipping something sweet (and free!) while dreaming, drawing, praying, planning, and writing. Uninterrupted. I’d mark up the margins of Genesis and spend extra long in a Psalm. I’d hopefully churn out a post on the blog.

The day would then proceed as follows: I’d return to the house for a spicy home workout, something with tricep kickbacks because if the past year taught me anything, it’s that triceps take up two-thirds of the arm and any hopes for making gains would require some reps of that long-neglected muscle. We’d bundle up the baby for a trail walk — he’d sit sleepily in the stroller without any of that rebellious 10-month-old backbending in efforts to escape. Then it’s Los Agaves for lunch, lazy afternoon lounging, and in bed by nine. Also, a cookie cake would be fine.

But it was late Sunday night that the first snowfall of winter blanketed our small-town streets. Local news reporters counted overturned cars and semi-truck slide-offs as early commuters crossed the icy overpass near our home. My longing for a quiet coffeeshop session was suddenly no match for my hatred of driving in snow. Not worth it, I thought, as I pondered the potential of spending my birthday in a ditch. So by 5 AM, my agenda was already out the window.

I settled into our kitchen table with some home-brewed medium roast of an Aldi-brand coffee instead. The boys slept soundly as cascading snow covered the world outside our window. The more the snow fell, the clearer it became that my day would not go as planned. Luke awoke ready to play only moments after me (hence the one-day delay of a birthday post), and it seemed quite cruel to take a ten-month-old into ten-degree temps, so the walk was off as well. To top it all off, our sweet youth group host mom made cupcakes, which satisfied my sugar fix but left me altogether too full to consume a cookie cake.

Sometimes I wonder why I even make an agenda. If twenty-seven trips around the sun has taught me anything, it’s that I really don’t know what the future holds. Thankfully these agenda-disruptions were quite tame, especially when compared with the birthday two years prior when I stood in a church sanctuary desperately trying to decide whether I should take one final glance at my lifeless mother before they closed her casket for good. (I opted not to, by the way, and have not once regretted it). I’ll certainly take a snowy morning over that. But very few things in life have gone according to plan, and yet I still find myself white-knuckling my timeline, my agenda, my wishlist of what surely must happen.

My sticky-note birthday agenda is a silly daydream indicative of a deeper heart problem: I think I know what is good for me. I make a timeline, marry myself to it, and slowly unravel when the metaphorical snow falls — when things don’t go as I planned. But I’ve certainly been walking with God long enough to know that He really is right every time. His way is only good — He can only do what’s best.

This stunning truth seems disappointing but actually brings about tremendous relief: Many plans are in a person’s heart, but the Lord’s decree will prevail (Proverbs 19:21). Praise the Lord that He, the omniscient, omnipresent, eternal God, lays out the course of my life so that little limited me doesn’t have to. Praise the Lord that He, in perfect trustworthiness, has written my days before the beginning of time.

I don’t have to spiral with all the deadlines I must meet in order to live a good life. The good life is lived in surrender! All that wearisome wishing and worrying that I must get pregnant at this time to have the baby in this month so our family will be this big by this year is worthless. It doesn’t add hours or babies to my life. And the rat race of wanting to have job A by month B so we can live in house C and send kids to school D is equally exhausting. I think I’m ready to kick back and trust the God of Creation to hem me in behind and before — to rightly ordain the events of my life according to His all-knowing, all-good agenda. Even when it looks nothing like I would have drawn up on my own.

And if it takes a botched birthday bullet list to help me get there, then thanks be to God and bring on the snow!