Is it time yet for Plan C?

In 1985, I was at Parris Island Marine Corps Recruiting Depot. I was not there as a recruit, but as a photojournalist documenting how the Corps turns raw recruits into Marines. Marine basic training was a great assignment and I would end up getting a Georgia Press Association award for the series of photos.

While on the rifle range, the instructor showed me and my editor around the range. During the brief tour, the instructor showed us the clips the recruits were using. They came in little cloth bags held shut with black safety pins. The editor suggested I hang on to one of the safety pins and the instructor said that was fine. I tucked it in a pocket in my camera bag and forgot about it.

A little over two years later I was photographing a girl’s high school basketball tournament. Armuchee was playing Coosa in a very close game. In the last seconds of the game, two girls ended up tussling over the ball. One of the girl’s jerseys ripped. The ref called a foul. She would get two shots, but everything stopped. The player was standing in the middle of the court trying to hold her top on, with the strap on the sleeveless jersey now torn. The referee turned to the officials’ table. I’m sitting on the floor under it when he says, “Does anyone have a pin or something?”

Time stops. I remember Parris Island and reach into my bag and there is the black safety pin. I can’t avoid the conclusion that it was put there for this moment as I walk the pin out to center court. The crowd applauds, the game continues. The girl with the jersey pinned together with the Parris Island safety pin sinks both baskets and wins the game for Coosa High School. I have always assumed someone was praying for that pin.

About that time, my addiction to news started to concern me. I enjoyed being around house fires and car wrecks for the adrenaline rush of getting the news and I knew that was not who I wanted to be. Victoria and I started planning and saving to hike the Appalachian Trail. It was time to figure out Plan B for our lives.

After taking six months to successfully thru-hike the 2,150-mile A.T., it still took a couple of years of work to move to Plan B. In the meantime, I worked as an Art Director for a trade association in Alexandria, Virginia as we wrote our first book and got it published.

Plan B—Victoria and I would work freelance at writing and photography while raising our newly born daughter Griffin. We were glad to get out of the Washington, D.C. area, pledging never to live anywhere like that again.

Plan B was great, even if it did involve never knowing where our next paycheck might come from. For six and a half years Victoria and I shared duties in taking care of Griffin and wrote books and magazine articles. Yet in the midst of living a dream life, God continued to call me to full-time, ordained ministry.

Already, Victoria and I were very involved as volunteers at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church. I had ministries. I even had a job I loved. But God was calling me to something in particular—Plan C. Plan C meant going through a lengthy discernment process in the Episcopal Church, selling the 125-year old house we had just finished fixing up after 4 years of work, and moving back to, of all places, Alexandria, Virginia for three years of seminary.

But God did know best and Plan C feels like it was something God had in mind all along. I look back at the many experiences I had and skills I picked up prior to seminary and see that like that safety pin, God was tucking away things that would be needed later.

In the Gospel of Matthew’s account of Jesus’ birth, we are introduced to Joseph and learn how he moved to Plan C.

Plan A for Joseph was to marry Mary. They were betrothed through a ceremony that contractually bound a couple together. The couple did not yet live together, but typically entered a yearlong engagement, which took a divorce to break off. During that year, Joseph learned that Mary was pregnant. He knows he is not the child’s father.

Now comes Plan B. Matthew writes, “Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly.” This is to put it mildly. We later read how in Jesus’ ministry he prevents the public stoning of a woman caught in no less a public disgrace.

Joseph could have denounced her publicly and called for her death by stoning. Joseph would never consider this. Plan B for Joseph is to arrange to quietly break off the engagement.

Then God intervenes with Plan C. An angel appears to Joseph in a dream to assure Joseph that this was God’s plan all along. In God’s plan, Joseph will take on the minor public dishonor of having everyone assume the child that would otherwise be born out of wedlock is his own. Joseph marries Mary, she has a child who Joseph names Jesus, which means “God saves.”

There is a reason this Plan C pattern repeats itself. We have our own desires, plans and dreams. Then life throws things at us we never planned—a pregnancy, a sickness. Much of what is thrown our way has nothing to do with God or God’s plan. But God is still works things together for the good. Getting our own plans out of the way can help the Holy Spirit lead us to the life God had for us all along.

There are a lot of plans we have had. Some went very well. Some not so well. The amazing part of the story is that even if you already worked your way through the alphabet, God is still willing to be part of your plans.

Whether it is Plan C for you or Plan Z, God’s will is more and better than anything for which you would think to ask. No matter what it is God is calling you to do and be. I can assure you of two things. 1) It’s probably not what you first thought it would be. and 2) You’ll be happier with God’s Plan C than with own Plan A.

It’s not that God has some complex, detailed plan where you have to discover every right answer. It is more like God providing you the building blocks you need to forge a more ideal future.

God is with you now and wants to be a part of your daily life. What are the plans you need to let go of to be the person God dreams of? Call on God, pray, and ask God to shape your plans. God will hear you and answer in surprisingly delightful ways.

(The Rev. Frank Logue is pastor of King of Peace Episcopal Church.)

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