I really like planning. I love a to-do list, a calendar, and putting items on both. It’s why I have spent so much time the last week of every year planning out what I hope to accomplish–everything from choosing a Bible reading plan to big ticket tasks like organizing my garage to doing something fun with my kids every day. I think all of these were part of my 2024 goal list.
It would make sense, then, that I don’t love surprises or spontenaity or disruptions to my plans. Fortunately, I’ve been married long enough to a man who is naturally more spontaneous and has a better perspective of time than me. I also have two kids, which chucked most of my perceived autonomy over my time out the window. So while I’ve loosened up a tiny bit in the last five years, it has still been an uphill battle to gain the right perspective on my time (which really isn’t mine) and its many disruptions.
At its core, life really pokes on personalities like mine. Life is full of disruptions, no matter how tightly I’ve organized my day. Kids get sick, snow shuts down everything in our Southern town, flights get delayed, I turn off my alarm instead of getting out of bed, a pipe in our house bursts two days before we host a birthday party…and these are just the smallest of interruptions. There are a million variables in life that I cannot predict.
I used to live in an alternate version of reality where I would get mad at these disruptions as if they shouldn’t be happening. I, up to this point, have had the privilege of refusing to recognize or accept that disruptions are just a part of life.
But last year, something finally broke loose in my inflexibility, which helped me to shift my perspective on goal-setting.
Disruptions are for My Good
As ridiculous as it sounds, I think the turning point was when we got the stomach bug. Both of our kids got it on the same night, so we hunkered down for about 36 hours while they recovered. We missed church and had to reschedule a small group that was supposed to meet at our house. And, just when my husband and I thought we’d avoided catching it, I woke up sick three days later.
Having to cancel plans and hunker down for a couple of days began shaking loose my tightly held grip on my own plans. Granted, I’ve been leaning into inflexibility for years, so it didn’t just change overnight. But now I have a benchmark to look to–proof that life’s disruptions are not something to be feared, ignored, or avoided. They happen, we adjust, and, at least with the small interruptions, we simply move on. Disruptions don’t have to completely derail my entire month.
This was not the first time I’ve been disrupted, to be sure. But, because God was working in my heart to change and sanctify it, it was the first time I was open to the lesson He was trying to teach me.
Divine Disruptions
About these same daily disruptions I so frequently gripe about, Christina Fox wrote this:
It’s hard to see all the little frustrating events and interruptions in our day as divinely placed opportunities to grow in grace, but they are. And seeing them as such helps us take our eyes off ourselves and put them on Christ, who cares more about our transformation than about our daily comfort. Rather than giving us a life of ease, he interrupts our lives with grace and shows us what we need most of all: himself.
If I truly believe that God is sovereign over all of life, then I necessarily have to believe that he is sovereign over the many disruptions, big and small, that I encounter throughout my days. These disruptions are just one of the myriad ways God works to sanctify me, to kill the idols of self-sufficiency and desire for control.
And if I can get that lesson through my thick skull, then it’s through that lens that I begin to view my own goals and aspirations. No longer is it about what I hope to accomplish for my own self, but it’s about humbling walking each day with my plans in open hands. While I believe that prayerfully planning and setting goals can help us to steward our God-given time well, held too tightly, those goals become idols, ones to be killed via whatever means necessary. For me, that means becomes divine disruptions to my plans.
Planned Spontenaity
More than a decade ago, Paul Tripp wrote,
“Parenting is all about living by the principle of prepared spontaneity…What you do know is that Scripture gives you the wisdom that you need and your always-present Messiah gives you the grace that you need to be ready to respond to the moments of opportunity he’ll give you.”
I believe that statement could apply to all of life. When I began setting my goals for 2024, I didn’t account for the ever-changing circumstances (good or bad) that would disrupt my plans. I didn’t consider how my daughter starting kindergarten would change my morning routines. I didn’t know that my grandmother would die on my son’s birthday or that my daughter’s teacher would die just a week later. I didn’t know any of the times we’d have to change our plans for sickness. I didn’t plan for any of the spontaneous family outings or trips we got to do.
And while I’m not accountable to predicting these things, I am accountable to how I react to them. Ultimately, the Lord’s plans are far better than my own and in an attempt to lean into that truth this year, I decided to forgo my annual New Year’s planning session. My prayer is that I will learn to open my hands and heart this year, to be flexible with my agenda and allow the Spirit to guide my steps more than I have done so in the past.
Photo by Sixteen Miles Out on Unsplash
