Trusting the Ultimate Planner

Tonight at the Gathering we talked about Trust, what do you trust in? Who do you trust? Why do you trust these things? And why is it hard for you to trust God? It was really cool as different people spoke honestly about what was difficult for them. Some of us are more worried about others opinions, some of us don't believe God will come through. For me one of the reasons I find it difficult to trust God is I think I know best.

For me, I am a planner, an organizer. My spiritual gift is administration. I enjoy planning and scheduling events to make the most of the day. When we load up the car, I'm the one who shuffles the luggage making it all fit like a game of tetris. I trust my skills in that. When God doesn't start fitting the pieces together as I think they should I start doubting. Doesn't He know it would work best if this or that happened? But where my doubt is the greatest so also is my confidence. When I believe that God has a much bigger plan then me, that He is working it all together for His greater good, well my admin side feels better.

I like knowing that God is a planner like me. People who fly by the seat of their pants stress me out. Now don't get me wrong, I can flex my schedule but I think usually my ability to do this is I plan for EVERY situation I can think of. In my mind, I imagine all the different ways things can turn out, I plan what I would do. But the thing with God is, He is tricky. He creates situations even my wild imagination never fathomed. So I sway between panic "does He really know what He is doing? He should just do it my way!" to complete confidence in my Heavenly Father "He really knows what He is doing and how it will all work out".

God continues to remind me that I cannot plan for every situation. My mind, my ideas are not big enough. I have had situations where I just knew there was no way it could end well, then I come out the other side not only unscathed but seeing amazing miracles. Like a movie character after a huge adventure, I pat myself down, looking for wounds and turn back looking at everything that happened and just shake my head in amazement at how it all worked out so perfectly.

This was the second Gathering back this quarter. Micah's second ever. He did pretty good, a little fussy but then ended up napping through most of it. It's at an awkward time for him. Micah still is not on a sleeping schedule. I feel completely incompetent on putting him on one. Forcing him to stay awake when he is clearly exhausted seems mean and trying to put him down when he's ready to play is just impossible. I try to put him down for bed around the same time but other then that, he rules the show. Some days he naps for only 30 minutes no matter what I do and then other days he will suddenly nap for 2 hours! Sometimes he is ready for bed at 7:30, sometimes he falls asleep at 6 (what to do with that!?! Consider it a nap? Or should it be bedtime? AHH, I just don't know!). So I'm trying to be somewhat consistent and hope eventually he will fall into a routine.

Tonight was also fun as my brother, cousin and my parents current exchange student from Germany came. My cousin has talked about coming for a bit and then my brother figured he might as well come check it out too. It was fun to see them. One of the big things I miss about working for the family business is getting to see my family all the time.

After the Gathering some of the group headed down to a local pizza place that has Tuesday Night Trivia. We did it a lot last year, was a good way to hang out and get to know people more. With Micah I won't be going but Tom still plans to. Right now I plan on sitting back, enjoying this rare peace and quite :)