The Best Laid Plans

[Dynamo54]

The best laid plans of mice and men WILL go astray when God decides.

The above is a play on words to the Robert Burns poem, but it came to mind today when I was just contemplating where I was in my life. I would imagine that we all, at some time in our life, have thought about and mentally planned how we would live our life in the future, and maybe even where we would go and what we would do. Maybe we even did more than mentally plan...maybe we took concrete steps toward our plan.

About four years before I was set to retire (and before God led me to Bible Truths) I was planning and thinking about embarking on full-time RVing. That is, buying a very large fifth-wheel travel trailer and a big truck and just touring the country for two or three years . I would have had to sell my house to be able to do that, but my wife and son (who is disabled and lives with us) all love to travel and I thought we would travel the whole country and then find where would like to live and eventually settle there, wherever that was. My wife was amenable to the idea (at least at first) and so I started planning financially and researching it all.....RVs, trucks, full timing, etc.

Then about 18 months before retirement my wife decided she wanted to travel, but wanted to have a home base instead of being on the road full time. So that changed the plans and the research. We would not sell the house and get a huge rig, but would look at something smaller and just do trips of about a month or so and then come back home for awhile and then do another trip, etc..  So, now I started planing accordingly for that change. However another issue came up regarding our son.

He became eligible for full-day adult day programs, and we found one that we thought would work. Boy did it ever work! My son started going to a program called A Brighter Community (ABC), whose motto is, "A meaningful day and meaningful life". A wonderful place with "Christian " philosophy without preaching and great staff. And he absolutely loves it!  Everyday, and I mean EVERDAY, the first thing he says when gets home is "Daddy, more ABC". You see they pick him up and bring home home, they go swimming or bowling or to museums, they have gym and play basketball, and all sorts of things.  And he has lots of friends. He constantly talks about "my friends, my friends".  So it is wonderful and we are so happy and thankful to God for this program for our son. But there was a problem that was going to impact our plans for travel. My son could not be gone from the program for extended lengths of time or would lose his place. We couldn't take the joy of his program from him, so we put the planning on hold.

Then another issue came up 6 months before retirement. Our only daughter who had married two years before, had our first grandchild 6 months before retirement. She and her husband both had to work to make ends meet, but we did not want our grandson to have to go to daycare so agreed to watch our grandson during the day. Now our travel plans were really changed.

So I see now that God had very different things in store for me than I had planned on. I was thinking about retirement and travel and taking it easy, and I guess, just floating along in life.

Then around early Spring of 2019 I was directed to BT when googling why does God care about me. The rest is history, as they say.

[indianabob]

Hello Dynamo,

It would appear that God cares about you enough to take a personal interest in your training and enlightenment.
Congratulations and welcome to the Bible Truth Forum.

Hope to hear much more about your adventures.
Indiana Bob

[ralph]

Very interesting story my friend.  Thanks for sharing.  I can relate. I've had many plans in my life, none of which ever came to fruition.  I have finally surrendered and come to understand that:

Proverbs 16:9
9 A man's heart plans his way,
But the Lord directs his steps.

[Dave in Tenn]

I've done a fair amount of traveling, but don't have any kids.  You win, friend.