What's the Plan?...by Liimu

"Would I plant your feet on an unsecured ladder? Its supports may be hidden,
but if I have asked you to step up, then surely I have secured the ladder."

That was sent to me by a friend of mine, excerpted from Messages from God. It's such an important idea - that when God (or whatever you believe in) makes a path available to you, why would you doubt that it's the right path?

When I found out I was pregnant, I told a friend of mine and she was so worried for me. "You've only recently gotten your finances under control," she said, "and you have a hard time managing with the three you have." Not sure what she expected me to do - I was married with three kids who had been begging for a baby brother for years. What am I, gonna go to Planned Parenthood and "take care of it?" Let's not even talk about the fact that my husband had been saying for months that he had a feeling someone was missing from our family and that maybe we should have one more.

I didn't say any of that to her. I told her, "We weren't doing fertility drugs, charting ovulation or even really paying attention to when we were having sex. Clearly this is God's plan and in my experience, God doesn't come up with half a plan. He doesn't drop something like this in your lap and then go, 'Oh, but good luck with affording it - that's on you.' I'm not saying that doesn't happen to people, but it doesn't usually happen to me. Usually, when God throws a curve ball it's because He has a much better plan than the plan I came up with and if I just go with it, He takes care of whatever pieces of the plan I can't handle. That's just my experience. If God felt we were to be blessed with another baby, I'm quite sure he's going to help us figure out how to manage and pay for raising him."

And sure enough, my consulting business is now booming, and I'm experiencing my best year ever. I'm having fun doing what I love to do, and I'm making more than enough money to afford this new addition to our family. Fortunate, because my husband just got laid off.

I know what you may be thinking - oh CRAP, and you just had a baby! No, no, no - don't feel sorry for us. This is a BLESSING! Before I got pregnant, I had told my husband this was HIS year. My business is in its fourth successful year. I can confidently say it is a successful venture. Now it's his turn. He has been in a job he hated for 14 years - time for him to live his dream of owning his own music studio and arranging and producing our music, as well as the music of other up and coming artists.

A couple weeks before he got laid off, we ran into a friend of my husband's (best man at our wedding, in fact) whom he had not talked to for nearly two years. We were playing tennis and he just happened to live right behind the courts. As it turns out, he need someone to help him run his sound company - perfect opportunity. Then, the day before he got the news of his layoff, he landed his first client - a woman from Buffalo commissioned him to write 3 songs for her. The funny thing is, I think God knew that even with all that Universal affirmation, Glen might get cold feet about pulling the plug on his day job. So, the layoff was the nudge he might have needed to run his music company full time. That's what I like to think, anyway.

I have a friend who's having a baby today. Like me, she's a scheduled C-section, underline "SCHEDULED." I got to the hospital at 12:00 pm and she was still waiting. When she was finally ushered back at 2:30 (her C-section was originally scheduled for 1 pm), we had spent two and a half hours chatting, laughing, generally relaxing her and getting her excited to meet her daughter. The first thing I said when I saw her was, "We make plans, God laughs." The only thing we can do is laugh right along with Him.

Have you laughed today?