Luxurious planning

I LOVE to plan. I plan out my children’s school year. I love to plan routines and habits for our family to work on. I love to broadly plan what trips our family may take at some point in life. I love to plan what we will do next year and even beyond. Really, I love to plan so that it is all known and I don’t have to trust at all.

This planning is a lot of work at times… sometimes needless work, as plans fall through. But I am realizing that planning is also a huge luxury. I can plan that it will take our family 5 minutes to drive to the pool. I can plan that if I make the pizza now, I will have time with the kids while it is cooking before dinner. For some reason we seem to look down on - or certainly get frustrated with - cultures or people that can’t manage to plan ahead. Yet we have no idea…

How many people do you know who do not know where they will find their next meal? I would guess that 20 or more people that we talk to or see in any given day have no idea where they will get their next meal. And yes, as a typical westerner who sees problems and immediately works to come up with a solution, I have thought many, many times on how to solve this problem. 

I cannot even imagine not knowing where or when I will eat next. Having food is so taken for granted in my life that I might even forget to plan a meal (and have to figure how I can pull something together – fast)! Because of their life situation, there are so many people in this world who do not have the luxury to even plan the next few hours of their lives. Their lives are constantly in the hand of generous people or worse yet – greedy people.

But I believe the luxury of planning in our lives has also removed an important aspect of our faith and trust in God. For us moving to an often unpredictable culture has helped me return to some prayer and faith during uncertainty, but I still have a long ways to go.

-- La Maestra