“Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce.”
— Jeremiah 29:5 (NIV)
I am a planner.
My family is probably laughing already because that may be the understatement of the century.
I like to know what is happening, when it is happening, how it is happening, who is responsible for making sure it happens, and preferably have a backup plan for when the original plan doesn’t happen.
And maybe a backup plan for the backup plan.
You know…just in case. 😉
So naturally, God gave me a life that has gone almost nothing like I planned.
Funny how that works.
When I was younger, I don’t think I dreamed about anything extraordinary. I wanted what I think a lot of little girls grow up imagining. I would get married, have children, raise them together with my husband, grow old together, have grandchildren someday and live a simple, loving family life.
Togetherness.
That was really the dream.
I wasn’t asking for a mansion or fame or some glamorous life.
Just ordinary.
Apparently, God and I had slightly different definitions of ordinary.
My first clue probably came when Mable was about two years old and started eloping.
And by eloping, I do NOT mean she found herself a nice two-year-old boy and ran off to Vegas. 😂
She would disappear.
Literally.
Gone.
When Mable was officially diagnosed with autism at four-and-a-half years old in January 2005, we didn’t know nearly as much about autism as people do today.
And suddenly I had a million questions nobody could really answer.
Would she live independently?
Would she drive?
Would she go to college?
Would she get married?
Would she have children?
Would she have a job?
What was her life going to look like?
What was our life going to look like?
AND of course I had a blueprint for motherhood too. 🤦♀️🤣
I just didn’t realize it until suddenly I didn’t know what Mable’s future would look like.
For years, I didn’t know if I would ever hear my daughter say, “I love you.”
I didn’t know if we would ever have conversations.
And I CERTAINLY didn’t know she was going to be so funny.
Because my girl is FUNNY!
Somewhere along the way, the little girl I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to have a conversation with became my best buddy and partner in crime.
There is a closeness between us now that I couldn’t have imagined back then.
But loving the life we have doesn’t mean I haven’t grieved the life I once imagined for her.
I wasn’t grieving Mable.
I was grieving for Mable.
I was grieving dreams I had for my daughter before I knew they might not be possible.
And yet, I’m not sure Mable ever got the memo that her life was supposed to be less than.
She is easily one of the most joyful people I know.
Apparently, she understood something about living the life you actually have long before her mother did. 🤦♀️
And autism wasn’t the only part of my plan that changed.
After seventeen years of marriage, 20 years together, the “grow old together” part of my dream ended too.
There wasn’t one huge defining moment.
It was more of a slow fade.
Doing life apart.
Trying to survive twins, autism, one income, stress, and just life in general.
And I want to be really clear about something. There isn’t a villain in this part of my story.
We were two broken, unequipped, selfish people trying to navigate a life neither of us had been prepared for. We failed each other in different ways, but we both played a part in the ending of our marriage. Somewhere along the way, we took our eyes off Jesus and started trying to survive in our own strength.
Eventually, we separated and divorced.
Life moved forward.
The life I had pictured when I was a little girl?
Marriage.
Kids.
Togetherness.
Grow old together.
That blueprint wasn’t coming back.
And I had no clue what my future looked like.
Fear?
Plenty.
Anxiety?
Oh, we had LOTS of that.
I had believed Jesus was real my entire life, but I didn’t have the peace I kept hearing other Christians talk about.
So, I went to our family pastor because I knew something had to change.
I needed to tear down what I thought I knew about Jesus and rebuild the foundation with what God actually said.
Brick by brick.
But looking back now, I can see something about that woman I couldn’t see then.
I wanted to trust God, but I also really wanted God to fix my life.
I had a plan, remember?
So even while I was learning to trust Him, I think part of me was still handing God my blueprint and saying:
“Okay, God. Here’s what we’re working with. How are You going to fix this?”
Apparently, I hadn’t gotten the memo that I was supposed to hand Him MY blueprint too.
I didn’t understand yet that trusting God wasn’t trusting Him to put my life back together the way I wanted it.
It was trusting Him with whatever my life was becoming.
And there is a BIG difference between the two.
I wasn’t there yet.
I was just beginning to rebuild.
Brick by brick.
That season became Journey to Ordinary.
Fourteen years ago, I was writing because I desperately wanted to know where I was going.
Today, I think I’m finally beginning to understand that I don’t have to know.
Because God’s got this.
That doesn’t mean I don’t still freak out.
Let’s not get carried away here. 😂
Apparently, my current spiritual maturity level allows approximately two days for a really good freak-out before I finally get tired of myself and say:
I AM DONE. God’s got this.
Progress, people.
Progress.
And then there was the house I thought I would die in.
I loved our house in DFW. My friends and family would probably have told you I was never leaving.
Honestly, we all thought I would die there.
Then I could not get a teaching job in the DFW area to save my life.
It didn’t make sense.
I had a great work history in a competitive, well-known district. I knew people. I had experience.
And the door was simply…
shut.
Around that same season, I was driving home after visiting Phoebe during her cancer journey. I remember driving those East Texas roads with trees lining both sides, forming this beautiful canopy over the road.
And I remember thinking:
I could live here.
That’s it.
No lightning bolt.
No booming voice from heaven.
Just a thought.
I could live here.
I had no idea what God was doing.
But eventually the doors in East Texas didn’t just open.
God SWUNG them open.
Teaching opportunities fell into place so clearly that there came a point when the only thing I knew to say was:
God is moving us to Tyler, Texas.
Here I sit ten years later, and I still answer the question, “What made you move to Tyler?” with one word:
God.
The woman who thought she would die in that house in DFW is now writing a blog called Bloom Where You Are Planted from East Texas.
You can’t make this stuff up.
A life that doesn’t follow my blueprint isn’t necessarily a life that has gone wrong.
That doesn’t mean I got the life I planned.
I didn’t.
There are still things I would love for God to write into my story.
Somewhere on my prayer list is still a godly husband and a marriage that reflects God’s design.
Do I know whether that’s actually part of God’s plan for my life?
Nope.
There are a lot of realities involved in bringing someone into our lives, especially when Mable’s safety is a priority that will always come first.
At this point, I joke that God is probably going to have to deliver the man via UPS, FedEx, or USPS with a giant sign attached:
THIS IS THE ONE.
Preferably signature required. 😉
Because apparently subtlety and I are no longer interested in working together.
But this is where I’m different from the woman who started Journey to Ordinary fourteen years ago.
She needed to know where this was all going.
I don’t anymore.
Would I LIKE to know?
Absolutely. 100%. Without question. Perfectly mapped out too, please, God. 😉
Again…
Planner.
But I don’t need tomorrow’s itinerary to trust the One who already knows it.
Maybe that’s why Jeremiah 29:11 has meant so much to me over the years:
“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD…
I’ve quoted that verse.
I’ve clung to that verse.
But I’m beginning to appreciate what comes before that famous verse even more.
God’s people were living somewhere they didn’t plan to be.
And He told them:
Build houses.
Live there.
Plant gardens.
He didn’t immediately take them out of the place they didn’t want to be.
He told them how to live faithfully while they were there.
Plant.
Live.
Trust Me here.
Well…
Apparently, I have been learning to bloom where I’m planted for a lot longer than I realized.
Maybe blooming where you’re planted isn’t learning to love every single thing about where you’re planted.
Maybe it isn’t pretending you don’t still have dreams, unanswered prayers, grief, or things you wish were different.
Maybe it’s trusting that God can grow something in a life that looks absolutely nothing like the blueprint you handed Him.
My life doesn’t look much like the one that little girl dreamed about.
There has been autism.
Divorce.
Fear.
Grief.
Unexpected moves.
Unanswered prayers.
But I don’t look back at the hard seasons of my life and wish them away.
Those are the seasons when I learned to cling to Jesus in a way I simply didn’t when life was going well.
When my plans fell apart, when I couldn’t fix it, when I didn’t know what was coming next, I had to depend on Him.
And somewhere in all that clinging, He became more than the Jesus I had believed in my entire life.
He became my foundation.
I wouldn’t have the relationship with Him that I have today without those seasons.
And that relationship is where the peace I spent so many years searching for finally came from.
Not because life finally went according to plan.
But because I finally learned I could have peace even when it didn’t.
“And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
— Philippians 4:7
Maybe that’s why they call it peace that surpasses understanding.
I didn’t finally find peace because I understood what God was doing.
I found it when I realized I didn’t have to.
I used to think peace would come when I finally knew how everything was going to turn out.
When the problem was solved.
When the prayer was answered.
When the blueprint made sense again.
But that’s not where I found it.
I found peace when I stopped expecting God to explain the plan to me and chose to trust Him with it instead.
And if you ask me what the woman sitting here at 55 knows that the woman fourteen years ago didn’t know quite as deeply yet, my answer is actually really simple:
God’s got this.
I don’t know what tomorrow holds.
Something may happen next week that sends the marching band in my head running back onto the field at full volume.
I might even give them a solid forty-eight hours to perform. 🎺🥁🎶
But eventually I’m going to remember what the life I never planned has taught me.
God was there when the future I imagined for Mable changed.
He was there when my marriage ended.
He was already preparing East Texas before I knew I was moving.
And He is here now.
I don’t have the life I planned.
But I have a God who has never failed me in the life I got.
Not. One. Time.
In The Marching Band in My Head, I wondered if maybe I’ve been asking the wrong question.
Maybe it was never:
Am I enough for this life?
Maybe the better question really is:
Is God enough?
And after everything I have lived through so far…
Yeah.
He is.
I’m glad you’re here.
— Jenni 🌸
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