the couch

Dont plan God out of your plans. 

It is very easy to do, we get caught up in the day to day and begin to plan. It is very human of us, but thats just the issue. Our humanly ambitions and thoughts could not begin the fathom what God has planned. Let me take a second to share something with you. 

I have been learning this lesson through my financial endeavors here in Haiti. I am currently living in temporary housing. I live on the Kids Alive Haiti compound with two of our oldest girls. This is often a blessing and sometimes a burden. I really enjoy it because it has given me a unique chance to get to bond with the kids and staff on a deeper level. Also my Creole has developed faster from living in a total emersion situation. I also feel like I have a better cultural understanding because I have been living with Haitians for the last five months, I have been dropped into Haitian life, if you will. 

It has been a hard experience in that I have almost no privacy or time to relax alone. Living with teenagers poses its challenges and living in a house that was not really made for a working adult has left me missing a lot of comforts. I live with all of my belongings in a tiny room just big enough for my bed, desk and dresser. 

However another pro to my situation has been that I have been saving a lot of money. I hardly pay rent here, so I have been saving the money in my salary that will eventually go towards rent when I get a place of my own. I have been putting all of this excess money each month in a jar. I had an excellent idea, in Haiti couches can be rather expensive since it is not something that most Haitians really have. I had planned on saving this money for a couch so that I could come home to a comfort that would help me to relax, bring some comfort and feel refreshed. 

However, naturally, God had a way cooler plan.

Since I started this jar of extra money awesome opportunities have fallen into my lap. 

Someone I know got seriously injured and some of this money was able to help him receive quality medical care at the doctor. 

Someone I know needed help paying for school, this money was able to pay for a year.

I was able to commit to being the Godmother to one of our community students’ new baby cousin. 

I dont share these things to boast, but to make a point. 

My lofty ideas were a couch. 

God’s ideas were someone’s health, someone’s education and someone’s faith. 

Oh boy do we underestimate God. 

I  have this image in my head: 

theres a little girl standing alone staring at a beautiful red flower. This is the only flower that has blossomed on the bush. She had watered and cared for this bush and is so proud of the flower that she has created all on her own. She is so proud of herself. God appears in the scene and just smiles at her and chuckles a bit to Himself. He extends her His hand. She reluctantly grabs his hand and He begins to walk with the little girl. She blinks and finds herself in a huge field of the most beautiful flowers she has even seen. Every color, even colors she has never even seen before, stretching far past the furthest point her eyes could see, spanning in every direction. She just stood there awestruck smiling at Jesus. He squeezes her hand lightly and says, “This is what I can do, if you want I would love to give you the honor of planting a couple of the seeds”. 

This is the image that comes to mind, and this is the honor we have been given. 

Go, plant those seeds wherever God tells you to, hold His hand tightly and look up to His face and thank Him for this amazing opportunity to put even just that one seed in the endless garden. 

Because without Him, you would have never even have imagined the garden, you’d have just bought the couch.