The Best Laid Plans.....

"The best-laid plans of mice and men go oft awry."

So wrote the Scottish poet Robert Burns.  Well, what he actually wrote is, "the best-laid schemes o' mice an' men gang aft agley."  But since, for most of us, our Gaelic is a bit rusty, we just read it in translation!

In any event, I've certainly found it to be a true statement this week.  I had quite a lengthy to-do list for this week.  Lots of things I had planned.  And I got off to a pretty good start on Tuesday morning, following our "holiday Monday".  But, after I had posted Tuesday's blog, when I moved to get out of the chair, things changed.  And since then I have been, as Daddy used to say, "down in the back".

The good news is that I am much better today.  And I suppose you could say the other good news is that today I have perfect posture!  That's because anything other than standing perfectly straight is still painful.  Standing at all is real progress, since on Tuesday afternoon that was pretty much impossible.

It all makes me feel pretty old!  And brings back memories.

There was the month before Al and I married when my mother decided the front porch needed to be painted before the wedding.  So, Daddy painted it. And threw his back out in the process.  We were wondering if he might be going to walk me down the aisle with his head parallel to the floor, staring at his feet!  Fortunately, he got better in time to stand upright at the wedding!

And there was the time our younger son injured his sacroiliac joint (in the lower back) playing baseball. (I'm not sure I even spelled that right!) He was a pitcher who threw really hard, which apparently put a lot of stress on that particular joint.  When the catcher threw the ball back to him, if it was a bad throw and Brandon couldn't catch it, he couldn't bend over to pick the ball up........he did a sort of deep knee bend/squat to get the ball.  We laughed about that at the time, but today I'm not laughing, since I'm doing pretty much the same thing.

My carefully planned to-do list is on hold.  I've done a lot of reading over the last couple of days.  Not any real deep reading, since constant pain is a bit of a distraction.  I've had a couple more encounters with my favorite Venetian police commisario Guido Brunetti, and in between I laughed out loud on several occasions as I was reading Savannah from Savannah.

Just sitting in this chair and not moving around very much has also given me some extended prayer time.  That's a good thing, since there's a lot to pray about these days.  For our country.  For the world.  And for people near and dear to me who are dealing with some really tough stuff right now.

Why did this happen to me?  Why are all my carefully laid plans on hold?  I don't know.  Some would some it's just coincidence.  But since I'm not a big believer in coincidence, I would not be one of them.

I do know that, no matter what my plan might be, ultimately God is in control.  That everything happens for a reason, even when I don't understand it.  That somehow this is part of the "all things" that are working together for my good (Romans 8:28-29)

As I'm sitting here, in this enforced time of stillness, I find myself not only remembering the words of Robert Burns, but also the words of the prophet Habakkuk:

"I will.....[listen] to see what he will say to me."  (Habakkuk 2:1 ESV)

Because, if I'm listening carefully, I'm sure He has something to say.  Something I need to hear.  There's a reason for my sitting here.  After all, it wasn't my plan to be doing this!

"Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the LORD that will stand."  (Proverbs 19:21 ESV)