Plan

With the new year come many new plans. Personally, I have rejoined Weight Watchers for the umpteenth time. Don’t worry. I am not plugging any program here. I am only being honest about what’s going on with me. When I have followed the WW plan in the past (instead of the Ellen plan), I have felt my healthiest, most energetic and satisfied best, which always leads me to the question of why I don’t just stay on it? But that is far beyond this post.

I also have a few other plans for this year. The biggest is that I am finishing a novel that will be published later this year. I have been writing it for over four years now. I decided late last year that it’s high time to let it go. My part is to write and finish the story. When it’s published, the result will be out of my hands.

However, I’m mostly trying to keep myself focused on God’s plan instead of my own for everything I do. I have had to learn, over and over, that when I put myself first, thinking mostly about what benefits me and makes me comfortable, I get lazy, fat, miserable, and depressed. But if I focus on God and His love for me and others, I feel hope and joy. Not the fleeting happiness that comes and goes even more quickly based on the whim of changing circumstances. The joyful peace that surpasses understanding.

This morning, as I began to make my “to do” list for the weekend, I read Romans 12 because this chapter, particularly verses 1-2 and 21, have intrigued and challenged me for decades. I urge you to find your Bible and read these verses. If you don’t have one, get one. If you can’t get one, let me know. I will find a way to get one to you.

Here is what jumped off the page to me today: “…plan your life around the noblest way to benefit others.” Romans 12:17 (The Passion Translation) I wept with joy reading those words because that is what I want to do even though it seems ridiculously beyond my ability. And where do I come off thinking any plan of mine could ever be noble?! But that’s it! If I make the plan, it fails. If I submit my plans to God and allow the Holy Spirit to guide and direct them, then they will be noble in the truest sense of the word: excellent, worthy, gracious, great-hearted.

That’s the plan. What’s yours?