How do you plan things? How do you know that your plans are set in stone? You can put them on a calendar and set a reminder on your phone. You can block off dates so nothing comes between you and what you have planned. The problem with all of this is that it is centered around “You.” You make the plans and you are going to see them through. But James reminds us that our plans are not necessarily God’s plans and that our timing to carry out our plans may not be God’s timing for carrying out those plans. Case in point James 4:13-15 “Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.”
Though this passage is speaking about the shortness of life and our inabilty to see what tomorrow brings it is also about how God is the one who decides when things will come to pass. Case in point our growing family.
In 2019 my wife and I became foster parents to a beautiful baby boy. In September of 2020 we adopted him and we were overjoyed. We fostered another little girl around that time as well and she has since gone back to her family. We decided a break was in store and so we took some time off from fostering. Almost a year later we felt like the time was right to re-enter the foster care system and open up our home and family to someone who needed a safe place and safe family. We had decided to go through a different organization this time, Arrow, and so we had to go through some new trainings to get re-certified as our license lapsed. We only took one class before God decide our timeframe wasn’t good enough.
About 2 weeks ago we had a college couple over for dinner celebrating their engagement when we got a call. I only answered it because it had a Texas area code and my phone number is from Florida so I only get spam from the Sunshine State. They asked for my wife and I handed her the phone and when she walked back in she had near tears in her eyes. There was a four-month-old baby girl who needed a home.
But we weren’t certified to foster, why would they be calling us? Well, it just so happens that when we adopted our son we became next of kin for any children taken out of the home of his birth mother. We knew nothing of his birth mom because she disappeared from the radar when he went into care but she resurfaced earlier this year, with a baby. Sadly, this child was going through the same thing our son went through and when CPS became involved they did some research and realized that this little baby has an older half-brother, our son. So we drove down to Houston to pick up this beautiful baby that looked exactly like our son.
We don’t know what will happen at this point, it is too early to tell. But for now, our home is full and chaotic, and a lot of crying in the middle of the night as we rock a baby back to sleep. We had been preparing in our hearts to receive another child into our home but we were expecting another 6 months of training and re-licensing to go through before ever having a kid in our house. But God. God said your plans are not my plans, I have prepared your hearts for this and here you go. Will this baby end up being with us forever, I don’t know. Will our children’s mother finally get the help she needs, I hope so.
What I do know is that had we stuck to our timeframe, if we hadn’t answered that unknown number our lives would look very different. God is the great orchestrator of our lives. So let us not hold on to our plans too firmly lest we overlook the plans that God has for us now. Let us prepare our plans knowing that at any moment they can change. Had we not been in the process of getting back into fostering our home would not have been ready and our hearts would not have been ready. But God knew, we already had a bedroom prepped and our hearts yearning. Praise be to God that when he adopted us it wasn’t according to our timeframe.
Thoughts Redeemed 