God Has A Plan

If you read my last post, you know I now live in a house located on what used to be my grandparent’s farm. Last weekend several of my cousins and their families came to my house for a family reunion. We ate and reminisced of our childhood days. We played a crazy game of relay ping-pong. And we laughed. It felt good. 

Talk fell to the summer Grandpa died of cancer and how shortly after that, Grandma sold the farm. Grandpa was sixty-six years old when he died. Many of us are now close to that or a bit beyond. Many of us are grandparents ourselves. Of course we are “younger” than Grandma and Grandpa ever were… in our minds.

But this blog isn’t actually about the reunion. It is about living in the will of God. It is about listening to His voice and doing what He asks. Tom and I always tried to do that. We haven’t always been successful because sometimes we’ve been stubborn and selfish. From time-to-time we slipped off the path but kept climbing back up on the road. 

God nudged us along the way. 

God tells us our days are numbered. When Tom died in 2014, our family could see evidence that it was his time. It brought us comfort. God knew all along that Tom would leave this earth on October 29^th  of that year.

The reunion brought back another sweet memory for me. It was a time God nudged us in the direction He wanted to take us. It happened in July of 1971. But to understand it I need to take you back to 1970, the year Tom asked me to marry him.

I met Tom when I was sixteen years old but didn’t start dating him until I was seventeen. That was in the summer of 1970. My grandparents were visiting us. They took an immediate liking to “Tommy.” The feeling was mutual. Tom thought they were great. When Tom asked me to marry him at Christmas that year, they were among the first people we told. 

I was seventeen and Tom was eighteen when we became engaged. I was a senior in high school and Tom was a freshman at the University of South Florida. We told my parents we wanted to wait until at least one of us finished college before we married. It was a plan.

Then, on July 16, 1971, my grandfather died. It was his sixty-sixth birthday. I clearly remember the drive home from the funeral. My parents were in the front seat and Tom and I were in the back. 

“Your grandpa was so young,” Tom told me. He talked about how much he admired my grandparents. We talked about how devastated Grandma was over losing Grandpa. 

I remember Tom looking at me and saying,“I don’t want to wait until we’re out of college. I want to be married to you as long as I can be.”

And so… on that drive home with my mom and dad… we planned our wedding for December. December 18, 1971. I was eighteen and Tom was nineteen. Forty-three years later he was gone, but I have the sweet memory that he got what he wanted. He was married to me as long as he could be. I hold onto the joy of listening to God as He nudged us along the way.

This next Saturday my family will gather in honor of Tom’s birthday. 

 He would have been sixty-six.

This post may seem sad to some. But to me it is yet another piece of evidence that God can indeed see around the corners. He has a plan for each of us. We need only to move forward when He nudges us along. I find comfort and peace in that. Imagine. The Creator of the universe has a plan for each of us. And we are made privy to it if we listen with our hearts.