Hello Blogging Family, thank you for your prayers and encouragement in response to our recent news! Between our upcoming move to Indianapolis, and Grace’s unexpectedly clear MRI, God has really been teaching us to trust in Him in recent weeks.

Have you ever felt like only about 17% of your plans come to fruition the way you anticipated? Maybe some of us can boast of a >50% success rate. But even the best planners among us can’t guarantee a 100% success rate, because, well, we aren’t God.

Isn’t it interesting how, despite knowing this in our heads, we often still get surprised or frustrated when our powers of prediction fail us? When, inevitably, an unlooked for circumstantial factor enters the equation, or people somehow don’t react the way we thought they would, or should?

Reflecting on my own life, I can name many examples of how God “redirected” my plans: when I was in college, I wanted to teach at a college/university. God has placed me in K-12 environments, in which I’ve grown so much as an educator, and for which I am very grateful. I had also anticipated staying in San Jose for the bulk of my teaching and administrative career, but God has opened the door for a new chapter in Indiana.

Even before I’d met Grace, I had wanted to one day get married and have a family; eleven months into our first year of marriage, Grace experienced her accident. This eventually led to us being told by medical professionals that the biological route to parenthood would be closed to us permanently, due to Grace’s seizures, and still partially-dissected carotid artery. In God’s wonderful sovereignty, at this point, He has removed both of those medical barriers.

Wow. Thank you Lord!

God gives, and God takes away. All things are from Him, through Him, and to Him. The apostle James gently but firmly reminds us:

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.”

James 4:13-15

As we walk with the Lord each day, may we more and more learn to surrender all aspects of our lives to Him, trusting that He knows infinitely more than we do, and He cares for us more than we can comprehend. When He “redirects” us, it will always be for His glory and our good.

Whatever you are facing today, whatever decisions need to be made, whatever unexpected news reaches you–know that the God of the universe is with you, and He will shepherd you with goodness and mercy. May we be encouraged by the lyrics to this song:

“Many things about tomorrow,
I don’t seem to understand;
But I know who holds tomorrow,
And I know who holds my hand.”