When Snow Happens

To humans belong the plans of the heart,
but from the Lord comes the proper answer of the tongue.
All a person’s ways seem pure to them,
but motives are weighed by the Lord.
Commit to the Lord whatever you do,
and he will establish your plans…
In their hearts humans plan their course,
but the Lord establishes their steps.
(Proverbs 16)

It snowed here.  If you live in the U.K., you’ll have experienced snow this week. If you live somewhere else, you’ve probably seen it on the international news. I love snow, and living in central London we usually get short-changed on the snow. I’d have liked more.  They cancelled the parkrun in Fulham, but that’s the only difference it really made to me. My brother, however, lives in Glasgow which has ground to a halt. Only Morisson’s soldiered on.  The shelves soon emptied.

I know this chaos is the cause of much amusement for Scandinavians and Canadians and any other nation who has enough snow ploughs.  But the truth is, we’re ill-equipped and so the snow does make things rather unusual. And it’s no laughing matter for people stranded in their cars on a motorway in Scotland.

Besides any actual risk to life, though, I actually like the chaos. Usually I love order (quite an affliction for a mother of four), but when all plans have to be changed because of the weather, it’s a wonderful reminder of one truth we usually ignore: we mere mortals are not in control.

We think we can control everything: what’s on TV,  what food we eat, what school our children go to, where we live, how healthy we are, how many children we have, how long our journey will be, how successful we are etc. You only have to look at how stressed people get when they lose control of one of these things, to see how much we love control. In about 6 weeks’ time parents in England will find out which primary school their children have got into, and the news headlines will show outrage and panic as parents lament over their school place, despite having moved house and gone to church for 3 years just to get into St Juniper’s because it’s Outstanding. We do not like being reminded that we’re not in control. We do not like being reminded that we’re not God.

Don’t get me wrong, I find this challenging. There are plenty of things I try to control, and I get irrationally upset when I can’t. Sometimes the things we want to control are good things, like wanting our children to follow Jesus. Or even just wanting this meal to be a blessing and taste good. But my loving Heavenly Father does like to remind me that I’m not in control. He’s teaching me to trust him, to hold my hands up and say, “You’re in charge, and that’s a good thing!”

If it’s a blessing to be reminded that God is the one in control, then this is certainly a major bonus of parenting. If anyone can ruin your plans, it’s a wilful child. Sometimes through no decision of their own, but often deliberately, they don’t fit into my neat plan. Before you have children, you can plan how many motorway stops you’re going to have on a long journey. You’d never dream of a toilet break 15 minutes before reaching your destination.

I remember trying to go out and meet Mike one day when I was about 37 weeks pregnant with number 2, and number 1 was 18 months old. I physically couldn’t get her into the pushchair, partly hindered of course by my enormous mass. I had to phone him and say I didn’t think I could go out. That was a low point. Plans thwarted by a very small, tantrumy toddler.

We might plan our career out and then find that our child needs more care than we’d expected. We might plan where to live and then discover we’re expecting twins. We might look forward to cycling holidays and then discover our child refuses to learn to balance on two wheels. Or their obsession with dinosaurs means that museum trips will be more enjoyable. We hoped they’d come to watch football with us and it turns out they don’t like crowds, or football, or Middlesbrough FC.

Im so grateful that in the major, life changing things and in the small irritating things of life, The Lord not only sees it coming but has planned it all out from the very beginning.  He is truly awesome.

Oh Lord, establish my steps. Amen.