What if I can?

Sep 21

Every morning I get up before the birds and sit in the stillness as the world slowly comes to life. We moved from a large city to a small farm town several years ago. A train runs through town each morning. The train whistle floats through the air with the snores from my dog. There’s something very soothing in it all.

I’m not sure I would appreciate that sound if it were always there. It’s become a symbol of this new life we chose.

I wonder sometimes, if we had known everything that would follow, would we still have chosen this life?

This past season has been filled with anxiety over the future and a desire to know God’s plan. Somehow that train whistle, the certainty of it, brings assurance of another day.

I’ve been walking down memory lane a lot lately, revisiting milestone choices we’ve made. Not with regret, but with hindsight. A led to B, which led to C, and so on. All of it eventually leading us here—to this farm town, our home, our life.

And yet, we’re still sitting at an intersection, trying to figure out this phase of life.

I’ve spent the past two years begging God to give me our five-year plan.

Please tell me what’s next.

How do we get through this phase?

Like Moses, I find myself asking God to choose someone else for this path. Let us have a redo, please. This is not a path I want to be on.

But then I’m reminded of the birds.

In Matthew, Jesus tells us to look at the birds. They don’t sow, reap, or store food away, yet their heavenly Father feeds them. Then He asks, aren’t you worth much more than they are?

That reminder draws me back to the present and makes me think about what a five-year plan would actually look like.

If I had known what mile fifteen felt like before I started training for a marathon, I probably would have laughed at the idea of even starting. How many choices have I made in life that, if someone had shown me the entire process beforehand, I would have bowed out of?

Yet I keep asking God to tell me.

Saturday was the two-year anniversary of my husband’s stroke. We spent the day with our daughter and granddaughter at the fair, the car wash—because that’s basically Disneyland for her—and then did some shopping.

It was a simple, beautiful day.

It took me almost the entire two years to get to a place where I could simply love being in the moment and not be devastated by everything my husband can no longer do.

I suppose that’s why the train whistle in the morning matters so much to me.

It’s reliable.

It’s not the five-year plan that God probably knows would have me asking Him to send someone else.

It’s simply the next day.

I know He has a plan for me. I don’t know what it is.

I started my LLC, Change We Didn’t Ask For, out of blind faith—or blind enthusiasm. I’m still not entirely sure which one.

I’ve been wrestling with what it’s supposed to be. But I’m beginning to realize it will become whatever it’s meant to become. I just need to keep putting one foot in front of the other and trust that God’s got me.

Then Matthew reminds me again: don’t worry about tomorrow. Tomorrow will have its own concerns. Today has enough of its own.

I can’t think of wiser words myself.

Had I known my husband’s stroke was coming, I wouldn’t have fully enjoyed the days before it. I would have already been preparing for the mourning.

Maybe there is mercy in not knowing.

So, no five-year plan.

Got it.

One day at a time.

It makes me think of advice I give my team all the time: How do you eat an elephant?

One bite at a time.

Last month, at a writers’ conference, I received a simple little glass that says, “What if I can?”

For some reason, those words have stayed with me.

Maybe because I’ve spent the last two years telling God everything I can’t do.

I can’t do this forever.