There is no Plan B

I've been thinking once again about the title of our blog: Plan A Ethiopia. I realized that many of our current readers weren't a part of the beginning of our adoption story. If you want to read the original post describing our blog's origin, click HERE.

Recently, I was having a conversation with a friend, Dave Brubaker [Bru], about Plan A. He's been such a great support and encouragement in the past couple years at the most opportune times - divine moments actually. He inspired me re-visit the original heart and vision behind this blog. Here are some edited snippets from our conversations...

• The only thing weirder to imagine than Plan A is Plan B. To God there is no Plan B. As the Sovereign God of the Universe, he only operates with this first plan in mind. When it comes to our infertility and our babies' birth parent's loss, he has a Plan A, too.
• You can hit a lot of walls with Plan A, but it doesn't change the plan. Oh man, there have been plenty of days and tests and conversations where I've felt like I've run into a brick wall. Even though I believe to the tips of my toes that this is God's Plan A for our family, it doesn't eliminate the difficulty of not being able to get pregnant or going through the highs and lows of adoption. And even when we hit walls in our Plan A, it's to redirect us to God's true Plan A.
  

Bru was talking about the cloud of witnesses [Hebrews 11] and how much we'll have to talk about in heaven about the way we think things should have been - in our timing - and how things actually were - in God's perfect timing. Those Hebrews 11 "heroes" faced floods, deserts, infertility, imprisonment, torture, and all kinds of other crazy things, yet these men and women continued to hope and trust in the God of Plan A. I love this passage:

All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them. [Hebrews 11:13-16]

May this serve as a reminder to us, wherever we are at in our pilgrimage. May we remember there is no Plan B and we can have hope...

For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it. What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit his very self? [Luke 9:24-25]