LIFE AND LESSONS

This is where is all begins. Or does it? God said, “I knew you before you were born”. He talks about “the plans I have for you” and to that end, your path is set.
Not that the path–your path– and it is not for you to change. That is the part of the plan that is difficult for us mortals to understand.

Your path is made of choices. Choices everyday and every second of your life. The analogy would be traveling to a destination. You can take the back roads or the expressway. You can drive fast or slow. Take risks or be safe. Stop by a roadside and enjoy the view or many other choices. As you can see, in using any of the choices you may or may not arrive at your final destination as you had planned. The plans that God has for you are somewhat similar, however a bit more complex. I don’t think He really cares about your driving adventures, and I believe that the plan is far more important that just that, but as a comparison of thought perhaps you will relate to this message.

Too often I have seen that people fight their plan, the plan that God has for them, or if you would, their destiny. Whether you like it or not, or whether you accept or not, He has a plan for you. He also allows you to have a plan for yourself. I watch people spend their lives being so busy with their own plans or no plans and never being quiet enough to hear God speak to them. Many simply trust their own plans and decisions and believe that they are doing the right thing. Imagine a person who is financially successful, has a beautiful or handsome spouse, nice house, new car and overall, they believe that life is good. Is this person following God’s plan or their own? One would think, as nice as this life sounds that this person must be following God’s plan! The troubling thing is that all of that; money, nice car; good clothes; house in the suburbs has nothing to do with your life or God’s plan for you. All in all and all of the possessions are nothing but things to rust and moths to eat.

Can you just do good things and have goods things happen to you? I wish, as many others do, that it were that simple. Trust, faith, belief is all part of it, and with that, God will direct you in all of your paths-if you let Him. It is the hardest thing you will ever do, but if you can do this, your life will be simplified beyond your wildest dreams. Some will agree and some will believe only that there is a higher power. Others will scoff and tell you that it is up to you to be successful. The say things like “it is written in the stars, or that’s how life is, or sometimes you get a lucky break.” Then again, how are they measuring their success? Nonetheless, it is what I believe and I will not cast judgment on what you believe. I only offer this as an alternative with the footnote that I have not always believed this. I have not always thought that God had a plan for me. The truth is that I have spent most of my life thinking that I knew exactly what I needed to do. I had my own plan……….

We were married on the eve of Halloween. I don’t remember why we did not marry on Halloween, but perhaps we were superstitious. Nonetheless, it was not extravagant and we didn’t have a lot of money. The truth was we had very little money, but that didn’t really matter. We rented a small apartment and living near a large airport, many of our neighbors were pilots or flight attendants. I worked for the city and my wife worked for a large utility company. We had a simple life and interesting neighbors. There was a fellow that lived below us that had a bit of a drinking issue. We would rise in the morning to find his car parked in the garden area that separated the two buildings. His doors would be open and Willie Nelson would be playing on the stereo. Sometimes we would be awakened at 3 in the morning, serenaded by Willie as well. Eventually, we saved some money and again, with help from Mr. Martin, we bought a house in the suburbs.

We had been married for about six years, and with that, six years of trying to conceive. Try as we might, each month there was nothing. It was fun trying, but there were no results. Our thoughts were always that if we had a baby, great! If not, were OK with that also. But after six years it was becoming more of a concern. We decided to engage the experts and made a visit to the family doctor.

All he could say, after many questions was “we needed to go through a series of tests.” He was our family physician and recommended a fertilization specialist. The “fun” part is that the experts will tell you that it is usually the man that has the challenge, so it was me first! It is actually fairly quick and painless. The first test is the unpleasant one, checking the prostate. The doctor believed that there could be a problem so he placed me on a strong antibiotic that eventually put me in the hospital because of an allergic reaction. I woke up one night feeling nauseous only to pass out in the kitchen and consequently woke up in the hospital.

Apparently, the good doctor had prescribed an antibiotic that did not quite agree with my constitution.

After that fun was over, there were more tests and trying and the “specialist” provided the diagnosis and results. He schedules a visit with us and starts the conversation with “After a careful study of the samples provided, it is my opinion that you, as a couple do not have the capability to conceive. He continues “The problem lies within your husband in that, from research of his past medical evaluation, it appears that he contracted the mumps at the age of puberty this stopping his ability to produce the sperm needed to procreate.” Well! I guess that settled that! The “expert” explained in terms that we could understand. Not that there a “one in a million chance” that my wife and I would or could conceive. It was “impossible.” There would be ZERO chance of pregnancy. I thinking that he could have figured all of this out before he have me those nasty antibiotics that put me in the hospital. However, it was not very good news and certainly not what we wanted to hear.

We discussed adoption but that was a long tedious process, and at that time we simply were too stunned. After a couple of months we tried the In Vitro Fertilization (IVF). That too was met with failure. We tried temperature, time of day, time of month, full moon. The results were always the same, so after a while, we gave up and quietly decided that we would live with the fact that children were not in our future. We simply decided to let it go and get on with our lives.

At the time, we had not discovered God and His wisdom. We had both been raised going to church, baptized, and going to Sunday school, but it was different then. You heard the message and read the stories in the Bible, but at that point, not to offend, I don’t think you really heard God speak. Even so, and unknown to us, He was alive and well in our hearts and spirit. Days past, then weeks, then months and we continued with our lives. A little sadden by the situation, but we knew that we still had each other and life was good. Still we had so much to learn about each other’s lives.

So after six years of marriage, we are on our 12th year of familiarity, only to be told that children where not in our future. So, we planned our future accordingly.
One dream that had always been shared was that we wanted to purchase property and build our own home. It would have been better to do this with children, but we accepted our situation. We sold our home, and purchased a small parcel of property in the western reaches of the county. We designed a floor plan, and I had an architect friend develop the plans. I walked the plans through the county zoning departments, hired the contractors, and acted as General Contractor. I also had family in the construction business, so that helped a lot.

The plans were completed and approved, and I had lined up all the contractors in order to get started. It had been about seven years since we first walked the aisle and we had begun development on our new plan of a dream home. The property was remote, and overlooked a beautiful lake. Our neighbors were close and yet far enough away for privacy. The closest store was at least 12 miles away, and I knew that after a long day at the office, this was going to be perfect! It was all so sublime.

Everything we had planned was working perfectly. Our future was set. The city had nowhere to go but towards this area, so I knew that this property would be worth a ton of money one day and would literally serve as our retirement nest egg. Talk about planning something perfectly, this was it! Until one day my wife began to complain about everything. Not some things mind you, but everything.

I could not do anything right, or apparently wrong for that matter, but whatever it was, it was my fault. The coffee in the morning made her sick, she did not like her perfume any longer, the car exhaust was making her nauseous, and life in general was not very good. We would fight every morning, and each night before bed. She would begin to weep over nothing and her nerves were shot. She was sick in the morning, and sick at night. It was driving me crazy, and becoming a real concern. I thought the worst. Could it be a brain tumor? A chemical imbalance? Perhaps the pressure of building this house was too much? I didn’t know and it was starting to concern me.

It came to a point where I had to demand that she make an appointment with our family doctor and find out what was happening. Me, being Mr. Thoughtful, did not actually think to make the arrangements and go with her. After the appointment, she comes into my parents house with a smug look. I ask about the appointment and her response is “He says I am pregnant.” I chuckle and roll my eyes at my Dad. I say, “OK, I guess we will have to wait for the results?” “Whatever” she says, full of doubt and not very happy, he said he would call me on Saturday.”

Saturday morning arrived without announcement. At best the doctor would say that the reading was false and she needed more blood tests.

Dad and I were sitting at the dining room table enjoying the morning cup of coffee. Carolyn was sitting at the kitchen bar complaining about something. The phone rang.
“Hello” she answers the phone. “Umhm” she mumbles.

“OK, I’ll see you on Wednesday.” She hangs the phone and looks at me.

Not a word. Silence. The kind of silence that completely fills a room with such completeness that it was like a dream. I looked over and her beautiful face was as red as could be, and tears were streaming on her checks-but she was smiling. I knew at that moment that the impossible had occurred. It was 1983 and impossible had become a reality. Our lives were about to change forever.

“I’m pregnant” she says in a little squeaky voice, her shoulders shrunching up around her.

Was God finished with us? Was that the plan He had for us? Not even close, and truthfully, we didn’t even think about that at the time. Looking back, He was there and it was His grace that saw us through. We never even asked for help. We did not deserve His grace or blessings. But that is the God that we serve. He asked for nothing in return and yet He gave us what no one could ever have given us.

As I have said, we all have a choice, and there is a plan for everyone. It may not end with you, but it may just start with you.

Think about this; If you could follow the lineage of Albert Einstein or Abraham Lincoln, or perhaps Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. all the way back to the first of their creation-their original father back many generations. Let’s say that you could, and you stopped that conception. It doesn’t matter how. Think about what the world would be today, because by stopping the conception, these people would have never existed. They would have never been born. I am not saying that our son is bound for greatness, but perhaps in 200 years it will be a different story.

All I can say is that you were not there when the doctor looked at us and said it was impossible. Note, he did not say not unlikely, he gave not a sign of hope, he said;

impossible.