plans.

i love to plan. i always have.

sometimes, i brainstorm complex things that never make it past the development stage (in other words, no one but me ever hears about it). like when i was about thirteen, at a small church that had a potluck every sunday, and i schemed out a plan for dividing up the plentiful babies and toddlers and constructing a "nursery" of sorts to relieve the mothers while they ate. i had grand designs for assigning certain young people to certain children, for collecting (and making) various toys for entertainment. i brewed this scheme for weeks. but i never stirred it into action.

then there are other circumstances where i am much less retiring about things. there's the time when i was somewhere around seven; i announced that it was my doll's birthday and we should have a party. and we did - that very afternoon. i called (neighbor) friends, and they arrived in their party wear. there was a cake, and candles. and presents, even (imagine - on such short notice! the neighbors went the extra mile). we have pictures to prove it.

i still plan things, even today. it just adds that much more fun to the actual doing. sometimes, even, it is enough to have the idea and to develop it; the plan doesn't always have to come into fruition to be enjoyable. but that list of all the cozy and relaxing things to do on vacation - that list and other like planning habits - is just so satisfying.

i'm not the only one. (my plans are nothing compared to His.) "for I know the thoughts and plans that I have for you, says the Lord, thoughts and plans for welfare and peace and not for evil, to give you hope in your final outcome. then you will call upon Me, and you will come and pray to Me, and I will hear and heed you. then you will seek Me, inquire for, and require Me [as a vital necessity] and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart. I will be found by you, says the Lord, and I will release you from captivity and gather you from all the nations and all the places to which I have driven you, says the Lord, and I will bring you back to the place from which I caused you to be carried away captive." -jeremiah 29:11-14,  amp