Geeses and Plans

Please excuse me for my inexcusably long absence. I don’t know what I’ve been doing lately, but it definitely hasn’t been blogging. Hopefully I haven’t lost the little number of readers I had (Mom! Come back! I’m blogging again.). School has started (fun fun). That’s about all on that front.
This morning I was lying out on the hammock and the sun hadn’t quite got to where I was sitting yet, when a hummingbird landed on the branch right above my head. It was love at first sight. I was slightly smitten with the little thing. Now, the pack (herd, school, gaggle—aha!) of geese that flew over the tennis court (the tennis court I was trapped within, just to clarify) were not cute. They nearly splattered me with “stuff”. Me and goose poop, we go way back. Long ago, when I used to play soccer and my dad was coach, he would get the whole team to kneel down in a circle around him on the grass. Then, because we were a rec team and didn’t have a bunch of fancy white boards and the like, he would pick sixteen pieces of goose droppings (I was the tall, skinny one), and run them around the little square field and have them do plays and drills that he wanted us to learn. I crumbled into bits more than once waiting for Rosie to cross pass me the ball.
Anyways, (I love reminiscing) I had a little discussion with my uncle, my dad, my sister, my grandma, (okay, it was kind of a big discussion), my step-grandpa, and my mom last night about God’s will. Thankfully, there were no fireworks. My uncle was saying that although God has a plan for each of our lives we don’t need to wander the earth fretting that we’ll “mess up” and somehow do something that was not part of God’s plan for us—at least, I think this is what he was saying. My uncle can be slightly more confusing than my dad at times—. My uncle didn’t think it was possible to do this (step out of God’s will), and didn’t think it was something we needed to worry about (I told him I wasn’t worrying about it, and he said he knew, but that someday I might worry about it and he wanted me to remember what he was telling me so that I would never worry about it. My uncle is an air force chaplain; sometimes he can’t help giving sermons—which is fine, because I’m all for them.) I agreed with my uncle.
Then my grandma said something that made me sad. She said that although God might have a plan for me or someone else, she didn’t think He had a plan for her, because she had never done anything special and didn’t think she would. Listen carefully, Grandy.

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” Job 29:11 (read the rest of the verse if you don’t know it. It’s amazing.)

“The Lord will fulfill His purpose for me.” (Darn it, I’ve forgotten where this one comes from.)

“O Lord, you have searched me and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all of my ways. Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O lord. You hem me in—behind and before; you have laid your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain…Your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.” (Part of) Psalm 139

It just makes me so excited to understand how utterly and completely God is involved in my life. He knows more about me than I do and none of the pages in His little book of “Hayley’s Life” are blank. He’s got notes and details on each one of them, just like He’s got plans on each page of my grandma’s.

Neat stuff.