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?

Sometimes the Greatest Gift is the One We Don't Give....by Liimu

Today is my husband’s 46th birthday. What I wanted to give him more than anything else this year was the freedom to launch his own music production studio. Before I found out I was pregnant with our first child last spring, my husband and I talked about his plans for starting his own business. When I started my business over three years ago, he supported me without hesitation. Even when the economy tanked in my second year of business and it looked like we might not make it, he never suggested I throw in the towel and go back to working for a traditional company. He helped me to brainstorm how we might get through it.

So when I realized that my company was going to be successful in good times and bad, I knew it was time for me to give him that same love and support he had given me for so many years.
My husband has been on leave with me for these past nine weeks and we have loved being together. We have loved being with Max, snuggling him and watching him grow. So naturally, I didn’t want it to end. I suggested maybe he should just stay home with him, rather than pay to have someone else watch him, and then he could grow his business at the same time. On paper, it sounded great to us both.

What I was forgetting was my type triple A, controlling, take no prisoners, take no mess personality. In a matter of days (fueled not in small part by spending some time with my sisters and my mother, who are just like me), I began bossing him around, telling him how I thought he should start his business, what I thought he needed to do to make it work, how he needed to HUSTLE. Finally, after days of this, he finally confessed that I was beginning to scare him and he thought he’d actually rather go to work and build his business at night rather than continue on listening to me nag at him about all he needed to do. I professed to be loving and supporting him, doing what I could to help him make his dreams come true. Meanwhile, what I was actually doing was scaring the shit out of him and at the same time sucking every last drop of happiness out of his journey. Clearly not my intent.

So instead, we decided to go with his plan. I am backing off and waiting for him to ask for my help or advice (which he has, once or twice). He’s going back to work in a few weeks and the time we have left together is all the more precious, and his desire to make his dream come true so he can leave his job for real is even stronger than it was before.
I am extremely blessed to have a job that I love, one that pays well and affords me the flexibility to spend time with my children and doing the things that I love. I’m not kidding myself or stretching the truth at all when I say that all I want is for my husband to have a job he loves just as much. What I realized this past week, however, is that the dream has to be his and how its realized has to be his decision. I can’t dream it for him and I can’t realize it for him. I can believe in it, though, and I can watch eagerly and with pride and baited breath as he makes it come true.

For more information about my husband Glen and the music production services he offers, visit www.maadmusicpro.com.