Yesterday while my son and I were exiting our favorite froyo joint, I couldn’t help but overhear a comment made by one woman to another as they were exiting behind us, and it was simply this, “fail to plan, plan to fail,” and oh, how true. Could there be three words that you could string together twice that could form a truer statement? and yet, for some of us this might actually be a painful statement. And how do I know this? Because it actually stung a little when I heard her say it, and then I had to wonder, out of all things, why did I have to hear her say it in the first place? Why did I have to be reminded, on this particular day, of all my failures, when in all actuality, I was already thinking about them anyway? And then I thought, maybe because God wanted me to. Maybe because God wanted me to take that statement and re-access, and so, I got to thinking.
Thinking about all the times I’d failed to plan. Thinking about all the times I did plan and then the plan didn’t go as planned at all and instead, went completely south. And it happens, to a lot of us and when it does what comes along with it can be a lot of heartache and disappointment. Sometimes when our plans fail it can be our own fault; whether it’s due to poor planning, or we don’t see it through to completion, or even sometimes when our plans aren’t completely ours to begin with and to become a reality they are dependent on a second or a third party who doesn’t follow through. I mean, what are you gonna do? You can wallow in it or, you can take some advice a friend of mine gave me just the other day, “you can make the most of the cards you’re dealt with.” And as of late it seems my life has been littered with all sorts of uplifting little catch phrases like this, and I don’t believe it’s coincidence. I believe a lot of times God places those things in our lives because He knows when we need to hear them and so yes, I’ve been re-accessing.
Re-accessing that, though our plans do sometimes fail, or even when we fail to plan, there is always a chance for new beginnings. We always have the opportunity to start over, or just start period, and that’s what I love about God. With Him there is never a finality to any bad situation, where God points a finger at us and says, “well, you shouldn’t have done that.” Or, “now look at the mess you’re in,” Or, “you made your bed, now lie in it.” Rather, I think God is exactly who He says He is: He is the God of hope, who turns around everything for our good, who sees our mistakes, our failures, wants us to learn from them, but then encourages, “there is always tomorrow. Tomorrow you can make better choices. Start new dreams and then, reach for them!” And I believe He wants us to do just that so, let me encourage you.
If you find yourself in a current situation where nothing has gone as planned, and I believe there are many of you out there, especially in today’s economy where some of you have lost your jobs, your homes, or are facing such situations with a feeling of impending doom (and believe me, I know because I’m right there with you) then first off I’d like to encourage you. I’d like to encourage you to not, “cry over spilt milk.” Whether your plans failed due to something you did or something that was completely out of your control; what’s in the past is in the past and no amount of rehashing will change one iotta of it. And secondly, remember that, “there is always tomorrow,” so look forward to it! Believe that God can pull you through any circumstance you may find yourself in, grow you the stronger for it, the wiser for it, and then go out there and – start something new! Look at your future as a future filled with all kinds of possibilities – because literally, it is. The only person that can hold you back is you. And on that, I’d like to close with some fortune cookie wisdom I got at a Chinese restaurant just last week and it read, “you can’t walk backwards into the future.” Or in other words; you can’t move forward if you’re looking back, and so, be encouraged: make some new plans!
