Inflexibility
I love a plan. Entropy makes me crazy. Messy people make me crazy. "Go with the flow" really means "a terrible day." I live to plan for tomorrow and next week and two months down the road.
I thought that mission life would be highly suited to my love for plans. Missionaries use day planners after all, right?
Ha!
Missionaries don't live by planners, we live by faith.
The missionary planner has two columns: "Daily Plan" and "Backup Plan." Truthfully, we could use one more column: "Backup, backup plan." Sometimes four appointments drop in a day. Sometimes the temperature is 67* and sunny on Wednesday, and 32* with freezing rain on Thursday. Sometimes your area splits and you have to share your car with incoming Elders (How, pray tell, does one "share a car"? In the January chill, I am tempted to say that "sharing a car" means designating the car to the sisters and the bikes to the elders.)
So you might have a car, and you might not. You can't trust the weather. You definitely can't depend on your appointments, because people are busy, sick, or disinterested, and will more than likely drop.
Where, then, can my inflexible, plan-loving soul turn?
I teach people every day to have faith, to repent, to covenant with God, to receive the Holy Ghost, and to endure to the end. But in a moment of stress, I am tempted to put my faith in my planner. To ignore the Holy Ghost in favor of routine. To give up when the going gets rough. To pine for the comforts of home. To forget the covenants of God. To mope and fall into apathy.
God, in His genius, demands more of me. He asks me to repent of my greatest pre-mission fault. I can't be a happy, effective missionary and yet cling tenaciously to my inflexible pet weakness. God asks me to go from Rigid Jenny to Elastagirl (Excuse the Pixar reference. I promise that I am a devoted missionary, even when I make movie analogies.)
As a companionship, we plan and plan and plan, and then we smile and revise our plans when they fall through. We laugh. We talk about the things that we are grateful for. We write sill songs about dropped appointments on the ukulele. Our prayers wax more sincere.
In short, we live what we preach. You can't not, really. It hurts too much to go it alone.
And so we trust in God.
I'll take Him over a day planner any day.
Sis Stewart, we are kindred spirits! I'm the one that sets the table the night BEFORE the party. The only thing I share with Elastigirl is the size of her thighs!
ReplyDeleteThank you for the wonderful insight as we get ready to join you in the field. Love you.
yes! And yet you can't be flexible if you haven't developed a plan.... funny how that works! One of my greatest strengths is flexibility (quite likely one of Rick's greatest frustrations) and yet, it's only because I plan to be so!
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