“Do you want me to cancel our reservations?”
She asked the question, though she already decided on the answer. Of course, I didn’t want to cancel anything; I wanted life to go on as normal. But this, this was anything but normal. Suddenly I was living a life interrupted.
Living life interrupted
Deep in my heart, planning is my passion. Wandering through life poses the risk of missing the high points, so I plan. It comes in handy at an amusement park because I can cram more into one revolution of the earth than anybody. But life isn’t an amusement park, is it? Eventually, plans get interrupted and life doesn’t turn out the way we thought it would.
Creased page corners marked points of interest along the trail and my itinerary. Each tiny dot on the map represented an equally tiny depot town, and a disproportionately large amount of time spent charting my route. Instead, my plans to cycle the Katy Trail were rerouted to the emergency room by a wheelchair ride. No matter how much research I did, how much I trained and how carefully I packed to minimize space and weight, life didn’t follow the agenda, despite all the effort. Maybe yours didn’t either.
Unplanned detour
Instead of an epic adventure, life took an unplanned exit to places I never wanted to go: places so hard, stops I never knew existed and destinations I wasn’t sure I could survive. Lying on the gurney 17 hours before departure time, I was faced with the biggest interruption of my life. One day I was the doctor, the next, I was the patient and the first threads of the fabric of my life started unraveling.
Life can change in an instant
Planning meant putting a lot of thought into packing. Extra inner tubes and CO2 cartridges were stuffed in my bag to fix inevitable flat tires, as well as a thin shammy cloth towel and bathing suit, just in case. Yes, just in case, I’d planned for all that, but I never planned for this. You probably didn’t either.
We interrupt this program to bring you….
Most of us know what it’s like to plan for something wonderful, only to be interrupted by something that forever changes our world. I mean a pandemic, really!? This certainly wasn’t on the agenda.
Somewhere in the back of our theology, we think Christians are immune to hard. Makes us want to believe Jesus was talking to someone else when he said we’d have trouble in this world.
When you need an instant cure
My gut answer was, “No.” Don’t cancel the reservations, just cancel the first day. In my magical thinking, I believed I’d get some medicine to make this horrible inconvenience go away, then I’d hop on my bike and meet up with the group at the second stop. Later, they teased me about the magic shot; instead the treatment was anything but an instant solution.
Preparation for interruption
And there was nothing I could do. Nothing except depend on God, believe in His faithfulness and trust Him with the itinerary. Good thing I packed more than a toothbrush in my pannier. Scriptures written on index cards barely weighed anything and took up no space, but those scribbled words in ink and bold truths written in my heart connected me to the ultimate cure.
Fighting stillness and resenting rest, my strength faded as I fought the course my life took. Disability led to dependence and dependence led to intimacy with a Holy God who knows the way.
Emergency repsonse
Your response to interruption depends partly on what you’ve packed, you know, just in case. Storing God’s word in your mind gives you spare air to fill your flat soul and pumping truth into your punctured and flattened plans expands your ability to roll forward.
A season of intermisssion
Weddings, funerals, graduations, celebrations, trips, births, every gathering paused. Yet, God is still on His throne and He has the prescription we need to embrace the season of intermission and lean into His plans, rather than our own.
Will you enjoy the scenery along the detour? Life isn’t canceled when it doesn’t go according to our agenda. This I know, His plans for me are greater than any plans I make for myself. So I’ll trust Him with this season. He is good, even when life isn’t.
What is God teaching you in the pause? Click To TweetGo ahead, cancel the reservation, let go of fantasizing about magic cures and ask God what He wants to teach you in the pause.
