Hello, dear reader! I’m so glad you have joined me here today for Five Minute Friday. I do love these Friday gatherings where Kate tosses out a word prompt and bunches of bloggers write for five minutes (or more) on that word. No editing, no scripting, just writing what hits our hearts.
I do want to tell you that I will be absent from this space on Monday. We are having company this weekend, and I will be spending lots of time in the kitchen putting southern food in the bellies of our guests. So, there will be little time for writing. Lord willing, I’ll meet you back here later in the week, perhaps on Wednesday.
Are you ready for today’s word prompt? It is PLAN. Here we go.
It was the sentence I said most consistently in those years when I felt like I had no need of the comfort or values of the town in which I grew up.
“I will never move back there.”
You see, my PLAN was to escape the stigma of being a North Georgia redneck, and instead, be a city girl. I had lost nothing in that town, although it was a wonderful place to grow up, AND almost every family member I loved was there. Still, I would never move back there.
God was having such a huge laugh at my PLAN.
I spent sixteen years as a ‘city girl’, loving almost every minute of it. To be sure, there were some low points, but overall, my PLAN to stay in Atlanta permanently was working out just fine.
In 1999, my husband’s dental office had prospered and he needed more space. So, we began working a PLAN to buy property in the metro area and build a new office. It was going to cost us a small fortune, but that was part of our PLAN, until August 16, 1999.
On that day, my parents came down to the city to have lunch with me. It was their anniversary. Over lunch, I told them all about the PLANs for Greg’s new office. My Daddy was a real estate developer in that small town that ‘I would never move back to’. His buildings always rented before they were completely built. Until 1999. He had a building that he had been unable to rent. A contract with a dentist had fallen through because the man’s wife was diagnosed with cancer just prior to signing the contract. At lunch that day, my Mother laughed and said, “You and Greg should move back home, and Greg could start a practice in your Daddy’s building.”
“Bahahaha!!” The three of us laughed, knowing that was NOT in my PLAN. We finished our lunch, and my parents went back to that small town that was not in my PLAN.
The rest of the day my thoughts were consumed with that empty building in that small town that was not in my PLAN. I went home and told Greg out my lunch-time convo with my parents. By December that year, we had sold our city home and Greg’s city practice, and had built a home and practice in that small town that was not in my PLAN.
I knew we were following the Lord’s PLAN at that point, but I didn’t know why. Three years later, I found out. My precious Daddy was diagnosed with metastatic colon cancer. My parents needed me, the medical person in the family, to be close by and able to help. I was, and I did.
I’m so thankful that God’s PLAN was greater than my PLAN. His PLAN is always better than mine.
For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Jeremiah 29:11 (ESV)
