I like to be in control. I like to know what’s happening and have a plan. People always ask you what your 5 or 10 year plan is. What do you want to do with your life? What are you going to do after graduation? I have been getting these questions so often, being that it’s my senior year. Because of my ability to BS my way through questions, I think every time I answer that question, it’s different. That’s also attributed to the fact that I don’t know. I have no idea what I’m doing and that scares me. I have no clue with what I want to do because my opinion on things changes so frequently.

My pastor is focusing on detours for our current series this Christmas season and it couldn’t be timelier. He’s not focusing on the normal Christmas story in the same way we usually do. He’s focusing on the detours that Mary and Joseph endured to bring the best miracle we’ll ever experience into existence. He said that in typical Jewish relationships, engagements lasted a year and if both people remained faithful, they had a giant party where they consummated the marriage.

Mary and Joseph had a plan. They were planning to get married, have kids and live a normal, God-fearing life. When Mary found out she was pregnant, she was in for serious shame and exile from her small town home where she was comfortable. Joseph was prepared to end the relationship when he got a dream from God that he was to stay with her. Their plan was ruined, but God’s wasn’t.

Even this past weekend, my brother dislocated his shoulder while wrestling. After three different professionals tried to pop his shoulder back in, they had to sedate him to get his shoulder back in the correct position. We were supposed to be attending a wedding that night and my parents were supposed to have a weekend away in Pittsburgh for the Steelers game. Our plan was ruined, but God knows what he’s doing.

The biggest challenge in my life has been the loss of my sister, Rachel. Rachel was invincible. She had been through tons of surgeries and she always came out with a smile on her face. My plan was to always have her in my life. It didn’t even cross my mind much that the life expectancy for someone with Hurler Syndrome being so short affected her. She was invincible. When she died last March, all my plans changed. Our family seemed so small and life just wasn’t as cheerful. Through that, though, God has shown my family a whole new plan. Not to say that everything is sunshine and rainbows, though, but he gives us peace when times get hard, and believe me, they get hard.

Through Rachel, people’s lives were changed. We hear stories, even almost two years later, of how her life and death has changed them. People have known Christ through her and gained joy through the way she lived her life. There were hundreds upon hundreds of people that I haven’t seen in years or have never met that came to her viewing and funeral. People reached out to me telling me stories about her for a long time after her death. People that I never talked to during her life! Although it wasn’t ideal, God had a plan for my sister’s death. He changed our plan because he had a better one. We don’t know the impact of small things until God reveals them to us. Rachel was one person, yet she changed hundreds of people’s lives. I don’t doubt she could have done more if she was with us longer, but God knew what he was doing. Why wouldn’t you allow the creator of the universe to write your life? He knows what’s going to happen, so we just have to allow him to take control of our plans and transform them to glorify Him.