I asked Abigail Reimel if I could write a follow up to her article about being a planner (found here). I am about 30 years older than her, and those years have taught me a few things. I hope someone older than me will follow up my article.
Abigail brought up some helpful points. Our culture likes planning; we applaud and encourage planners. That can be good. In my work, I like to say that success is not accidental. I have succeeded in my work secondary to good planning and continuous intentional improvement. I would be delusional to think I could provide the level of service I need to provide without planning.
We would, however, be wise to follow the serenity prayer that Abigail included in her piece, by being more mindful about what we can plan for and control because some things really are out of our control. We can and do spend a great deal of time 1) trying to control things out of our control, and 2) focusing on the small picture ignoring that God is focused on the big one.
In my care of women who suffer the deaths of their babies, everyday I see people struggle mightily with issue of acknowledging there was something profoundly important they had no control over. Our culture says if we do the right thing we will get the right result and often it simply isn’t true. I wrote in an earlier column: “Women spend their 20’s gearing up to get control of their lives and circumstances. They spend their 30’s trying to maintain a white knuckle grip on their lives and circumstances. Those of us in our late 40’s have figured out that no matter how hard we try, we will never gain control over our lives and circumstances.”
The big picture: what is success to you? The world might tell you success is a good job and a full bank account, but what does our faith tell us? If we grow in our faith while serving others and helping them find and grow in faith, then we are successful. I encourage Abigail and other young people in their studies and pursuit of learning and career goals, but so many of our real successes will be found in the odd and often seemingly ill-advised experiences we have along our path. So many things that seem random and even detrimental when we are young turn out to be pivotal and necessary steps along our path, things we can often see when were older looking back.
People smarter than me have written on the topic of discernment, but when I discern on an important issue, I try to make a good “worldly” decision with all the logical factors considered, but I know that God will have plans of His own for any given issue. So I keep my heart open to success not looking like I originally planned. For example, when I have to make a decision as big as buying a house, I consider the dozens and dozens of practical factors. Then I ask God to guide the process so that the factors I cannot possibly know will rule the final decision, which will put me in the place He wants me to be in to interact with who He wants me to interact with and serve Him.
We once bought a house which turned out to have leaky windows, terrible siding, and a busy street I hated. The next door neighbor was an Evangelical woman who was (like me then) a NICU nurse. We often respectfully and joyously spoke of our faith lives. One day she told me that she had been to a delivery of a baby who would not survive. When caring for the baby and speaking to the family, my face was prominently in her mind, her Catholic friend. She knew God was asking her to offer to Baptize the baby, which she did not believe in. She tried to put it out of her head, but there my face was and she couldn’t purge it. So she asked the family if they were interested in Baptism, and they said yes. The baby was baptized before he died, and she knew she did the right thing for that family. In eternity, my formerly leaky windows won’t matter but that Baptism will.
Twice I had jobs that were tedious and seemingly fruitless for me and my family, but I introduced one of my coworkers to one of my (late) husband’s coworkers, and they later married. Little picture issue for me but big picture for the families that were created when people fell in love.
When my kids were little, I made three or four attempts to start small businesses that would allow me to quit my nursing job. While moms all around me succeeded, my ventures didn’t just fail—they failed spectacularly, keeping me in my nursing job when I really didn’t want to be there. On my 40th birthday (God was not subtle, huh?) I was offered my current job which has allowed me to serve hundreds and hundreds of hurting women and families, and be right in the middle of the development of a care model that is changing the care of infants born with life limiting conditions world wide. The educational video I made has been seen 40,000 times in 140 countries and been translated into 6 languages. God kept me where He wanted me (sometimes kicking and screaming about it) because He had a plan.
My sons both suffered setbacks that resulted in them returning home as young adults. It seemed a strange thing to have seven people in our house when we expected to be nearly empty nesters. My husband’s sudden death while we were all together made me see that my sons returning and being there for me then was a blessing.
We all want to have successful lives, and normally for that to happen we must plan, but when we let God guide our steps, we may succeed in things we plan, but we may also ultimately succeed in serving and living in Gods will even when our worldly plans seem to crash. As an older person who can now see so many of my disasters as stepping stones to eventual good, I encourage everyone to thing bigger about how we see our plans, successes, and failures. Abigail was wise to take a closer look at “planning” and surrender at such a young age.
5 thoughts on “Response to Abigail Reimel’s “The Curse of the Planner””
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Since my son’s accident 16 years ago, I do not plan for the future and I have in 67 years come to belief that the universe will take care of me and my family no matter what. Simply living a totally worthy life insures a karmic repayment in the future (here of next lives).
Matt:6: 26 Look at the birds in the air. They don’t plant or harvest or store food in barns, but your heavenly Father feeds them. And you know that you are worth much more than the birds. 27 You cannot add any time to your life by worrying about it. 28 “And why do you worry about clothes? Look at how the lilies in the field grow. They don’t work or make clothes for themselves. 29 But I tell you that even Solomon with his riches was not dressed as beautifully as one of these flowers.30 God clothes the grass in the field, which is alive today but tomorrow is thrown into the fire. So you can be even more sure that God will clothe you. Don’t have so little faith! 31 Don’t worry and say, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ 32 The people who don’t know God keep trying to get these things, and your Father in heaven knows you need them. 33The thing you should want most is God’s kingdom and doing what God wants. Then all these other things you need will be given to you. 34 So don’t worry about tomorrow, because tomorrow will have its own worries. Each day has enough trouble of its own.
Bad things happen to very good people; good things happen to very bad people; bad things happen to very bad people; good things happen to very good people. Things happen! That they do is so less important than how those things are accepted and embraced. I have in 67 years learn that if you place faith in the universe, you will be taken care of….karma!
Thank you for this post. As the mother, years and years ago now, of a baby who died in the neonatal intensive care unit, I have so very very often wished that the influence of a person like you was present there that day, and that she was baptized even without my young and completely ignorant self’s direction, which I did not give, so focused were we on our medical emergency.
In the midst of sadness, you remind me of my own ‘treasures.’ Those are the solitary events that have made my life so meaningful, like this instance was for you, the baptism of that baby. That is so enormous. If a person had that alone, on that day coming when a cloud is our dress and the wind our hair, that person is rich. I have an experience on my blog about a baby saved from abortion, in which I am the American woman who speaks the bad Spanish who managed to say the right thing at the right time. I wrote about it as soon as it happened so that I would not forget one moment, when it is my turn before my judge. It’s called Another Ordinary Day, if you wanted to read it. That event has meant very much to me over the years.
I believe that event, that baptism, must show on your face now, like a glow or a potion that makes others overlook wrinkles. It’s true!
Thank you so much, Mrs. Ruiz! This is beautiful, and this Advent I am really trying to take your advice, to value the journey and the lessons it teaches, rather than allowing the pressures of school override my ability to appreciate anything other than grades. Thank you for reminding me to look at the big pictures, the way our lives touch everyone else, and for writing such a beautiful piece in response to my post. God bless!
Dear Tammy-So true re we don’t know what happens to all the ripples when we throw a pebble in a pond. For me a pitfall of what I thought was my planning was that after a plan came to fruition, I actually thought that I had done something. And often I did something I could add to my resume. Note all the “me” “I” “my” in those last statements. In modern speak, I didn’t do jack. All along the way others helped me, boosted me up, supported me, encouraged me – and God, the whole total Trinity-was the power and force and impetus for anything I thought I had accomplished. So if you plan, plan with God, because He is there, always, and He is just going to laugh at you as He did at me when I thought I had done something. But it is a comforting laugh. Guy MClung, San Antonio.