Quite a bit, lately, I have been hearing, “We make plans and God laughs,” and although I like it okay as a saying, I do not truly believe that. More so, I believe that, “We make plans and God Ponders.” Then He laughs.
I believe that God laughs in either one of two ways – the kind that happens when you are standing in a circle with your buddies who are all for your plans, or the kind that happens while conversing with your parents who do not ever seem to understand. God either laughs like a friend, saying, “Go for it, man,” or He laughs like a parent who says, “No, I don’t think so.” The type of laugh we hear from God depends on whether or not our plans fit with His Plans for us.
God loves his children so much that He tries to make our plans work with His Plans. As long as His Will is done in the end, then I believe He laughs like a friend. If not, well then, He laughs more like a parent who knows better than to let us mess up our life or His Plans for us, which probably affect countless others other than just ourselves. And I believe that before God laughs one of these laughs, He Ponders how our plan works with His Plan and how He can make His Plans our plans.
I had all kinds of plans in October of 2018. Inviting my parents to go with me and my husband on our 25th anniversary trip to North Carolina was not one of them, despite Dave’s suggestion to do so. I was furious. “You must not want to spend alone time with me if you want to bring my parents,” I halfway yelled at him. He said it was not that way at all, that he merely commented on how it’s a three-story house, and there is plenty of room if we wanted to invite my parents. We wouldn’t even notice they were there unless we wanted to.
It simply crossed his mind because my mom had been talking for years about wanting to do exactly what we were getting ready to do, stay in a log cabin in the mountains of North Carolina, surrounded by waterfalls. Well I nixed the idea immediately and refused to consider it. The thing is, for more than a year now, I have been wondering if things could be different today, had I just brought my parents to the mountains with us.
Perhaps my dad would not have come down with pneumonia. Perhaps he would not have gotten that blood clot in his leg. Perhaps he would not have suddenly died a week after we got back.
I wonder how God laughed at my plans back then.
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