Something interesting happened today in response to yesterday’s Planning post. I was working with one of my patients and she was talking to me about her life. She has some serious physical difficulties and is going to be unable to return home. She became upset, tearful, and told me that the way her life was going was not how she had planned. How interesting is the timing of my meeting her?
She brought up exactly what I had been thinking yesterday. Sometimes things don’t go exactly as planned. In her case she had some medical problems and went to the facility in which I work to get better. She is working hard but her muscles just aren’t responding. Her insurance is likely to cut off her benefits in about 2 weeks. She can’t go home and so she will be going to an assisted living facility where she will have access to hands-on help when she has need. She is realizing that she is never going to have as much control over her own life as she once did. She is experiencing high anxiety because of her difficulties. She is retired and wanted to live her life traveling, working at her church, visiting with friends and family. None of that is going to happen. Things did not go according to her plan.
We talked for about an hour. She said she felt like she had drifted away from the Lord. She had stopped praying, was having trouble remembering what she read, and was trying to keep her faith but she felt like she just couldn’t hear God talking back to her anymore. The Armor of God came to my mind again like it did yesterday. She was familiar with the scripture and reached over to her Bible to find it. I was so happy to see her effort!
She was having so much growing anxiety that the noise in her head was drowning out God’s voice. I explained that His voice is still there, its just that the enemy was causing her to focus on the noise and not the truth. The truth I told her, is that God love her and wants to talk with her. He wants her to love Him even more, to use this challenge as a motivation to grow closer to Him than ever before. The truth is not in her difficulties, those are just temporary challenges that have been put in her path but they are mere bumps in the road are worldly. They are temporary.
God however is a different situation entirely. He is forever! The ultimate reward is to be with Him in true joy for all of eternity. I told her that the road bumps stay on this Earth when she passes. They will be gone. Completely, totally, utterly gone.
I told her that it is time for a new Plan. A Plan to use her challenges as a way to beat back the enemy and draw closer to God than ever before.
It is time for a new plan for all of us. Fight through the challenges we all face. Fight hard. Give the enemy a strong kick in the teeth. Rise above the noise. Focus your plan on living life more fully. Under God’s Umbrella.
