That’s the plan

In one of my favorite movies (yes, I’m one of six people in the U.S. who actually liked/loved this movie. Suzanne, I apologize if you’re reading this!) Elizabethtown, at some point or the other most (if not all) of the main characters make a statement that goes something like this: “That’s the plan. We have a plan.”

Drew Baylor (Orlando Bloom) has a plan to kill himself after his plan for success ended in a “fiasco.” The California/Oregon Baylors have a plan for how to say good-bye to patriarch Mitch who has passed away on a visit home to Elizabethtown, Ken. To top it all off, the Kentucky Baylors also have a plan for how to bury and celebrate the life of their version of Mitch. Everybody has a plan; no one’s plan fully plays out. The rules change; the characters’ minds change; the things they thought they knew are replaced by the truth—or at least some more truthful version of it.

So after staging my own Cameron Crowe mini-marathon this weekend (Almost Famous and Elizabethtown), plans were on my mind as I slipped into the church service on Sunday morning. I had plans for the afternoon, for the work that needed to get down on Monday, for where I wanted to go eat after church (which sadly, did not work out and ended with me eating at Captain D’s. 😦 Ugh.) Anyway, my pastor began preaching on the parable of the rich fool in Luke 12:13-21. I have to say that I sort of sat back in the pew and thought, Oh, a parable. How original. Like there’s anything more to learn from this. I went to divinity school, right?

Thing is, I was wrong. The pastor took the sermon a different way than I expected, discussing what this parable teaches us about what it means to live a successful life in God’s eyes. And he pointed out that these verses very clearly state that it’s not possessions, pleasure, or, wait for it, plans.

By nature, I’m a planner. I planned my major and where I would go to college very early in high school. I planned internships and jobs. I plan what I need to get done at work each week, sometimes each day. I often find it hard not to take over planning other peoples’ events because I think I’m so good at it. But what I’ve learned along the way, in the big God-picture of things, when I try to live according to my plans, it never turns out exactly as I thought it would. And my plans, like Drew Baylor’s, often lead to fiascos.

I know now that if I’d gotten the guy I was so in love with in high school and planned to nab, I’d be unhappy and probably divorced. And I would have negotiated on my values and beliefs and only going through the motions of a shallow relationship with God. I thought I had the plan all figured out when I moved to here and started casually dating a guy. I was pretty sure I’d finally found a good thing. That makes me laugh now, because in hindsight, that relationship wasn’t healthy or right for me or him. I was trying to make myself into his version of me, and that wasn’t fair to either of us.

I never would have planned to be nearing 30 and single. I’m the person who used to say that my parents were “a little older” when they got married (25 and 26). But I also never would have thought that I could buy my own house, live entirely on my own and not die, go to a foreign country on a mission trip, or speak publicly like I sometimes have to do for my work.

My life’s success is not determined by how many of my life plan milestones I hit or miss. It’s determined by the lifetime witness and service I devote to God. It’s a success if His love flows through my life and into those of others. And that’s a big enough plan.

It’s too hard and stressful to try to figure it all out anyway!