When Life Wrecks Your Plans

Life doesn’t always go the way we’d like.

This is abundantly clear at the Olympics, where competitors face “the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.”

Every athlete in the games has dedicated years to get where they are. For some just getting there is enough, but many have hopes, even expectations, of winning a medal. Sometimes their hopes come true, but almost every night I witness heavily favored competitors whose hopes are crushed. They slip, they fall, they tear an ACL, or they lose by mere hundredths of a second.

All that work, all those hopes and plans—crushed.

That’s how many of us felt Friday when we learned that a section of our church roof had collapsed.

Stunned. Disappointed. Crushed.

So much for my Saturday plans: spending the day at church with the Platform Design Team installing our latest design. (I think of it as building sets for the sermon.)

And so much for the worship leader’s rehearsal plans, the children’s ministry plans, the sound and media techs’ plans … everybody’s plans—all destroyed with the collapse of the roof.

We’re still holding church, off site at a local middle school, but the service won’t be anything like the one that was planned. All that work—down the drain (or buried under snow, shingles and roof  trusses.)

Dealing with disappointment

Unlike professional athletes, we don’t have reporters sticking microphones in our faces moments after a crushing defeat. But like those athletes, we can take our defeats like good sports or bad sports. Some Olympic athletes have shown their quality of character by congratulating the winners, accepting their own frailty, and choosing not let this defeat derail their lives. Do I handle life’s troubles and frustrations as graciously?

According to James, we should, “Consider it a sheer gift, friends, when tests and challenges come at you from all sides.”* Umm, having the roof cave in doesn’t seem like much of a gift to me. Looks more like a big, messy, expensive nightmare.

But James goes on to explain: “You know that under pressure, your faith-life is forced into the open and shows its true colors. So don’t try to get out of anything prematurely. Let it do its work so you become mature and well-developed, not deficient in any way.”

Yep, nothing like trials and disappointments to bring out our true colors. And unfortunately, it is only through surviving setbacks that we learn to move forward despite them—and to do so with grace and hope.

 The fact is; life does not always go the way we planned.

We all face challenges, disappointments, and tragedies. It’s just a part of life. The question is: how do we react? Do we shake a fist and complain about how unfair life is? Do we trudge on, convinced misery is our due? Do we give up? Do we grow bitter?

Or do we acknowledge that we’re not actually in control of the universe, that stuff happens whether we like it or not, and chose to look for the new possibilities in every change of plans?

Like the rest of my church family, I am bummed about the roof, but I choose to look at it not as a disaster, but as an opportunity to have my own faith stretched, and to watch as the community comes together, because it seems nothing unites people in action like overcoming a disaster.

So how do you deal with life when the roof caves in? What helps you through those rough patches in life?

I hope you choose not to let wrecked plans ruin your life.

 * James 1:2-4 Scripture quoted from The Message Bible by Eugene Peterson.