On paper the first full week of February looked very busy. My calendar held a number of meetings and appointments plus two day-long commitments bookending the week. On the Sunday night prior, I was reviewing the plans, mentally preparing for a week with a lot of moving pieces.
As it turns out, God had very different plans for me that week besides the ones I had lined out in my planner.
Around 9:30 that Monday morning, my son Will’s lung collapsed while he was sitting in a class at the university. He knew the signs. It had happened before. More than once. I drove to campus to pick him up for an x-ray. We anticipated what was likely coming… a painful chest tube, hospitalization, a surgery, recovery, waiting for the lung to re-inflate. We weren’t wrong. He was admitted within a few hours.
God was rewriting my calendar for the week.
There isn’t anything wrong with making plans or keeping a calender. Taking time to plan has helped keep me on an even keel in a very busy season.
But at Jesus’ feet, I am learning to hold plans loosely.
The day after Will’s surgery, I stole a few moments to journal at the hospital: "Releasing everyone and everything to God’s care means that I don’t have to plan ahead. I can be responsive to His initiatives in my life… like the unexpected events of this week, which were supported at every turn by His Body and His provision."
The word God gave me for 2025 is RELEASE. I journaled that day about releasing the false security of “planning,” “purposefulness” and “productivity.” Certainly, being mindful of tasks and thoughtful about accomplishing them is no sin in itself. But if I am relying on my own resources alone, these very helpful tools can become idols, and very harsh taskmasters indeed.
I am learning that releasing my plans and everything else into God’s care isn’t being lazy or inattentive. Nor is it inviting catastrophe. Those are all accusations that get flung at us by a world in which identity is formed by productivity.
Do you sometimes feel the weight of the world telling you everything rests on your shoulders? Do you ever feel your flesh pridefully insisting you can and should be independent of God and perhaps anyone else? Have you ever fallen for the trap of the enemy who wants tempt us to doubt God’s goodness and to believe God is not for us?
I have. All of that. But these are not the ways of the gospel of Jesus.
As I’ve been thinking about these things, I was struck by this line from a wonderful book called Adore by the insightful author Sara Hagerty: “[God] leans in to reach us in the midst of what we are tempted to resent.”
Will’s lung collapsing and requiring surgery for the third time in his young life is the sort of ground upon which resentment could breed quickly. So is my carefully curated calendar being upended in the blink of an eye. When we are faced with hard things, unexpected things, unwanted things, we have a choice. Resent or release.
By God’s grace and only by His grace, I was able to see the experiences of the first week in February in their proper light: God leaning in to our lives with His goodness and His care. In mysterious, not-of-this-world ways that week in the hospital was full of blessing and tenderness. God was leaning in to teach me.
“[God] leans in to reach us in the midst of what we are tempted to resent.” He does this because He loves us too much for us to be stuck in places that are less than His best for us and our hearts.
Would you dare to spend some time considering places in your life that you might have chosen resentment over release? Would you return to Him for rest and restoration? You are safe to do this in the presence of a loving God who released His Son into our world to bring us freedom. His invitation to us is ancient and yet so very present: “For thus said the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel, ‘In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and trust shall be your strength…’” Isaiah 30:15a
If you would like a deeper dive into the invitation of Isaiah 30:15, head over to the Bible Study page and check out Return and Rest: A Study in Isaiah 30.