Plans: 💣💥

What do you do when your plans get exploded?

Strangely, as I have been learning to choose to be more direct and resourceful (i.e. just go straight at the obstacle instead of wanting it to go away), plans getting totally wrecked hasn’t been bothering me as much.

We got a flat tire tonight on the way to Divine Liturgy, and it’s pushing back our plans to visit the wife’s brother’s family by a week. And we had to rework our plans, and ended up at a tire store on a Saturday evening. We grabbed a few donuts on the way home so the kids wouldn’t feel that they got entirely cheated out of everything they were looking forward to, and we had a nice dinner.

“Good”

I’m remembering Jocko Willink’s “Good”. Every time anything happened, he would just say “good”. As in, total acceptance, must be good somehow.

I thought, at the time I originally heard that, that it was a bit crazy, because some things are not good.

But, au contraire says the Bible: “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” (Romans 8:28)

Somehow, God will bring good out of evil, and work things to his purposes.

And! As co-creators with God, we also get to bring good out of evil. We can find the opportunities in obstacles, and through it give something to the world.

Truly, everything we are given is good.

I got to change a tire. Good. I’m getting safer tires on the car tomorrow, instead of getting a flat on the 2 hour drive. Good. I’m committing to set up some maintenance schedules for my automobiles so I check some key systems to ensure I am prepared¹. Good. We had a nice dinner at home. Good.

Nothing about today was actually bad. It was just unexpected.

But I could have made it bad. I could have complained about missing our trip, not seeing friends at the potluck, all the work we will have to do extra tomorrow, along with needing to find time to go to Mass (instead of this evening), and just generally grumbled about how nothing really works out.

But I didn’t.² It all happened, and it was good.

It’s not that there is no such thing as evil. But even the evil that happens to you can be for your good, if you accept it, and embrace it, and respond to it like it is your responsibility.

“Good”

1. The spare tire was 21 years old. 21. Years. Old. And a bit flat itself. ↩︎
2. There was some swearing at the old tire when I cut my hand on some exposed wires, to be fair. ↩︎