The phrase “planned parenthood” always makes me chuckle.  From my perspective becoming a mother was when God graciously and firmly grasped my hand and pulled me out of a deep, cavernous pit with two bright blue lines.  There was no planning about it from our point of view.  Then He did it 2 more times…most likely laughing at the plans I had made for myself.  Three little surprise packages that all started with a rescue from the white-hot mess I had gotten myself into.  Far from the debates in the political arena I think we give ourselves way too much credit when it comes to “family planning” and “birth control”.  After all…the mere fact that God is in control of absolutely everything coupled with our experiences makes those two phrases, in my mind at least, totally and completely laughable.

I think sometimes when we think of the very first story of the bible that we heard so long ago when we were just wee tots ourselves, you know Genesis 1:1 “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”, we sometimes forget that He’s still doing it.  Yes, He started it all in 6 days and rested on the 7th, but He’s still in and amongst all of His creation.  He didn’t just decide one day while He was hanging out in the dark to come up with this grandiose plan, burn it on a CD, load it into a drive, hit “run”, make sure He had the battery backup set on the biggest server you could ever imagine, brush His hands off and stand up and walk away.  God isn’t watching from a distance with His feet up on His desk.  From every golden autumn leaf to the each bud of springtime, every sunrise to every sunset, to each and every breath and heartbeat of every single living creature, God is the great Creator and Sustainer of it all.  And we think we can “control” the creation of life?  Bahahaha!

I often snicker when I hear people say a baby was an “oops”.  But then I start to think about it and it starts to drive me crazy because God doesn’t make mistakes.  We do…but not the Almighty God.  Every single living, breathing human being has a purpose in God’s plan whether they choose to acknowledge it or not.   When you try to wrap your mind around it all…it’s perplexing and sometimes it even gives me a headache because my feeble human brain just can’t fathom the wonder of God’s greatness.  But we get the blessing to experience it everyday in the joyous light that bursts from the eyes of our children…and not because of anything that we’ve done…because God is SO awesome! 

I can’t any take credit for how incredible our children are…they have so little to do with us.  I could never in a million years dream up that each of our children’s own unique, vivacious and passionate, however different, personalities would be so evident while still in the womb yet be so consistent into who they are becoming still today.  But then each of them had the same exact sweet newborn cry to be so familiarly heard three times over.  It makes me well up with overwhelming gratitude that God loves me so much He has designed every detail of my life to be immeasurably more than I could have ever asked for imagine…and He had it planned from before He started it all!  All I can say…is WOW!

It is so easy in a world seemingly technology-driven full of drug induced “medical miracles” to forget that God is sovereign.  He decides it all.  Only when things don’t go the way we think they should according to our plans do we stop to ask “Why, God?  Why aren’t you blessing me?”…when…shouldn’t it be the other way around?  Shouldn’t we be looking all around at the great splendor of His creation and say “Why, God?  Why have You blessed me so richly?”  We don’t deserve one breath let alone an entire lifetime to enjoy on His luscious planet.  And what do we do?  We chase the latest smart phone, postgraduate degree or bigger, better, higher-paying  job thinking we’re paving the way for ourselves.  

Think of what would happen if we all stopped in our tracks the next time a picturesque sunset took our breath away, or one of our children amazed us with what we didn’t think they could possibly have known yet, or we just for one second felt content in our life and sat quietly in thankful wonder in God’s presence and just said “thank you” and acknowledged that He gave it all to us?  Even though I can’t wrap my mind around why God has blessed me, every time I stop to listen and thank Him for the wonder of His creation, I am blessed even more.  Which makes me always want to come back to this place…of being in wonder.

Through HIM all things were made; without HIM nothing was made that has been made. John 1:3