Sunday, October 18, 2009

The Best Birth Plan

This morning I became a Grandpa again. (That's two weddings and two new grandchildren for us in 2009.) My son Nathan and his adorable wife Jenny have waited five years for their first child. But the seeming eternity of the wait disappeared like a vapor the moment they saw their new baby girl. The past is over. The joy of now is what seems most relevant and real.

Lots of careful thought had gone into the birth plan. The location, surroundings, birth attendants, and dozens of other details were put on paper and communicated to the participants. What could not be scripted, of course, were all the unforseeable elements. In the end, very little actually ended up going according to the script. In fact, most of this drama was improvised. No one planned on over 50 hours of labor, three sleepless nights, a large team of medical personnel, and unfamiliar medical devices. The baby scrapbook had a place for a photo of "Baby's First Bath", but no place to record baby's first feeding tube. The pregnancy books showed serene pictures of happy mothers bonding with their babies, but no pictures of mothers looking at their babies through an acrylic barrier.

And yet, despite the deviation of the plan, the fact remains that our entire family is all smiles and basking in the wonder of our new addition. Little Maylin has captured our hearts already, and the "birth plan" is now irrelevant. It's history. Only the baby matters.

On eternity's stage, I've seen the same thing happen. I've had my ideas of the perfect script for how God should perform on behalf of people I care about. I pray my ideals and preferences, and often forget that God is not nearly as interested in my plans as He is in the well-being of the person. God is not a publisher of warm, fuzzy scrapbooks. God is in the people business. His work concerns life and death. And He will do whatever it takes on behalf of my loved ones...your loved ones...to see that a new life is safely delivered. I must remind myself to stop telling God how to do His job, and trust Him to do what He needs to do. He says, "My ways are not your ways, and my thoughts are not your thoughts."

I'll go with His plan. After all, He's been delivering people since the dawn of time.