Our son Klaus is very good at making plans. Maybe that’s why he’s never lacked for friends. I’ve overheard many conversations among his pals that have gone like this.

Person #1: “So, what should we do tonight?”

Person #2: “Oh, I don’t know. Whatever you want.”

Person #3: “It doesn’t matter to me.”

Person #4:  “I’m easy. Whatever the rest of you want.”

Finally Klaus would say, “How ‘bout if I call and make a reservation at ________ and then we’ll text so-and-so to see if he wants to meet us there at 8:00. After we eat, we can go bowling at ________. They’re open till midnight. Let’s take so-and-so’s car, and we can all chip in five bucks for gas.”

Everyone would jump up and follow that lead. It’s enjoyable to be around someone who’s good at making plans and setting them in motion.

The ultimate Plan-Maker is God, of course. He was making and activating plans long before the earth existed. Although we’re drawn to him when his plans for us turn out well, we often turn away when his plans cause us pain.

A few days after Nate and I found out about his cancer, we talked about the great Plan-Maker’s plans for him, for us. In those early days of shock and disbelief, it was too hard to look forward into the storm of disease and death. Instead we looked backward to study the plans God had made for us, to see whether or not they had worked out well.

For example, it had taken four and a half years to sell our old farmhouse in Illinois, despite houses around us selling like hot cakes. While we waited, we’d had to lower the price six times, bringing it down to nearly half of where it started.

We’d made a plan, our own plan, to buy a townhouse with cash from the house sale and stay in the area until Birgitta graduated from high school. But real estate took its now-famous dive, along with a simultaneous dip in Nate’s law practice. The Michigan cottage was on the market, too, but nothing was moving.

Finally we decided to let God make the plan, and his idea was to move us full time into the Michigan house, an idea we hadn’t seriously considered. Right then our old farmhouse sold, and shortly thereafter, we moved. This was at the beginning of last summer.

Once we were settled in Michigan, pursuing permanent residency status, Nate clipped unnumbered articles about the glut of townhouses on the market and how it would be nearly impossible to sell one, once we owned it, with all the new town homes being offered at “used” prices.

It took all summer for me to unpack the boxes, fitting two homes worth of stuff into one. Nate commuted to his job in Chicago’s Loop by way of a train, enjoying the new variety of passengers. By the time we were acclimated to our new environs and fully settled, cancer had arrived. Was all this God’s plan? And the bigger question was, could it possibly be good?

The day Nate and I looked back, we saw the reasons behind some of those plans. First, by causing time to pass before the old house sold, he saw to it that Birgitta graduated from high school, so there was no longer a need for us to remain in the area. Had we purchased a townhouse, we would have been stuck with it.

Secondly, by having the summer to unpack and get settled, everything was in order just before our cancer news arrived, and we were set up to receive our crowd of children for the duration. Thirdly, after Nate died, the cottage was the perfect place for a grieving widow to cocoon with the Lord through a snowy winter.

I see all of those things now, plans God put into motion for our good. I still don’t understand why Nate’s death had to be part of his plan, and it sure doesn’t seem good. But because God planned it, and because I believe God took him to paradise with intention, I accept it. Maybe down the road I’ll look back and see the reason. But if I don’t, I’ll continue to believe God doesn’t make mistakes, and that he is still the best Plan-Maker in the world.

^“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” (Jeremiah 29:11)

This blog site has never belonged to me. It wasn’t my idea, but came into existence early last summer through my daughter Linnea’s urging. I believe her idea was prompted by God, since he was looking into our future and saw Nate’s cancer. He knew we’d need a way to communicate with people who wanted daily updates on his health. Beyond that, the Lord saw the help it could be to readers (including me) who were struggling to get through other things.

www.GettingThroughThis.com has been a joint effort all along, first with Linnea, then her husband who set it up, followed by the Lord’s prompting of what to write each night. Others have contributed words and ideas, and you, the readers, have poured forth encouragement with your comments.

Today I gave some thought to the strong connection I feel with each reader. You and I, we are a blog-family, tied together in cyberspace by tentative words on a pretend page, all of which could disappear with one “delete” click. Without knowing many of you personally, I still feel an attachment. I believe this is partly because I’ve been praying for you from the beginning.

God has encouraged me to bring “the readers” to him every single day, praying different requests at different times. Although I can’t list all of your names, he knows every one of you intimately and makes my generalized prayers specific, according to what he knows each of you needs. And when one of you writes, “This post did something for me today,” I thank God for answered prayer.

When I read the comments left at the end of each post, it thrills me to see some of you interacting with each other, developing new cyberspace relationships separate from the one with me. I feel like a mother hen watching over her chicks, glad to see them getting along so well. We are an extended blog-family, not by blood but by adoption, not because we have to but because we want to.

The Lord sees far down our life pathways, knowing which of us is about to enter a season of sickness, death, unemployment, financial shortfalls or other stresses. Even while we’re reading the blog, he could be using it to prepare us for what’s just around the next corner. He knows exactly what’s about to crash into our lives.

Writing these words each night is a joy for me. As I listen throughout the day to hear what God will prompt me to write, I sometimes feel nervous, wondering as the hours pass what the subject will be. As evening approaches, if nothing has yet come to mind, I come to the edge of panic and must firmly remind myself its God’s blog, not mine. He’ll bring the words when the moment comes, just like he sent daily manna to the children of Israel in the wilderness. There was nothing for their tomorrows but plenty for their todays.

Nate’s hospital, Rush University Medical Center, has asked if they can re-post the “GettingThroughThis” blogs from the 42 days of Nate’s cancer. Posting three entries a week on the hospital’s web site, they have just put up Day #14. In this setting God is applying my prayers and the blog words to those who are in the middle of medical issues: pain, disappointment, disease, surgery, even death. The Lord knows what he’s doing.

Thank you, readers, for sharing this experience with me. None of us knows where it’s leading, but we can all be confident God is taking us there together, the whole bunch of us. We are family.
“But to do good and to communicate, forget not: for with such sacrifices God is well pleased.” (Hebrews 13:16)

As we age, we get inflexible, or at least that’s the perception of young people. We oldsters have a reputation for liking our own bathrooms, our own routines, our own way of doing things and our own beds. (When I gratefully crawled into mine after 17 nights away, I actually spoke to the bed.)

I don’t want to become unbending and am consciously trying to emulate the examples I know who live their lives with a great deal of give. Standing strong for moral beliefs is one thing, but being immovable on everything else results in a rigid life no one wants to be around. Even on the issue of right and wrong, listening to another point of view is a valuable (and attractive) M.O.

Nate was an example of someone who came to the end of his childhood fairly sure he knew the “right” way to do things. The way he figured it, GM was the place to buy cars, the Lutheran Church was the place to worship and Brooks Brothers was the place to shop. At the age of 17, he thought deviating from those and other standards translated into foolishness.

Then he left home for Northwestern University where life opened up new ways to view people, places and things. All of us look back and see signposts of importance marking our way. None of us leaves our family of origin (whether for college or another adventure) without quickly finding ourselves jamming a big post into the ground next to life’s path right then, which is why it’s important to leave home.

After passing that marker, Nate came to another big one when he met me. A signpost got mowed down when that happened, because opposites attract with extraordinary impact. Without that, we would have chosen opposite forks in the road.

So, if we were to end up together, Nate had to adapt. I didn’t drive a General Motors car, belong to the Lutheran Church or shop at Brooks Brothers. At that road marker he chose to step over many of his former beliefs, sizing them up as family traditions rather than life’s only way. Without that mental shift, he couldn’t have justified dating someone like me. With it, he could plant a new signpost and keep going.

That’s how life is for all of us. We grow, change and see things differently as time passes, hopefully practicing inclusivity rather than exclusivity. Looking back over 43 years since Nate and I met on a blind date, I see his life marked by a display of adaptability as he willingly rearranged the life markers he had once planned.

He grew into a fresh outlook in virtually every category including who he married, where he lived, whether or not he became a father, how many children he had, how he made money, how he spent it, and yes, what he drove, where he attended church and where he shopped. New points of view were not garnered grudgingly but came about with reflection and a consideration for the other fork in the road. But once he chose, he didn’t turn around.

This photo was taken on a Sunday afternoon in a tiny summer cottage with a roomful of lively children swirling nearby. (See below.)

To me it’s a picture of Nate’s adaptability. Had he lived longer, I believe he would never have stopped adapting. His response to terminal pancreatic cancer was proof of that. When that road sign appeared, he modified his point of view in a way that demonstrated new heights of flexibility, because it led to the most significant marker of his life: death.

As different as people’s lives are from one another, no set of signposts is identical, but we’ll all end at the same marker as Nate did. It might have a different size and shape, a different way of being planted next to the path, but we’ll all end there. Rather than it being a dead-end, however, it opens the way to the last post, eternity.

Nate won’t pass any more markers or be presented with any more demands for adaptability. He’s moved past the biggest and best landmark of them all into God’s prepared home, and he’s done traveling.

“Blessed is the man whose strength is in Thee, in whose heart are the highways to Zion.” (Psalm 84:5)