Change Of Plans Challenge and Podcast

Don’t Mess with My Routine

A change of plans can make good sense. For instance, I spent three days with a chain saw and a splitting maul to prepare my own firewood. The red fir took longer than I expected. In fact, the whole project interrupted my routine schedule.

Here’s my ideal day. Get out of the house by 5:00 a.m. and jog six miles. Then I spend eight hours at the computer working on my latest writing project. Finally, right before dark, I run another five miles. That makes eleven to twelve miles every day, every week and month of each year.

Change of Plans Warranted

So, for the first couple days, I would stop splitting wood about an hour before dark, so I could run my evening miles. On the third day, it finally hit me. My morning jog keeps me in good running shape. The evening jaunt gives me exercise. It’s a way to burn some calories. Why in the world, I finally wondered, am I insisting on quitting work to go exercise? Surely it was enough to heave a six-pound maul for nine hours. That’s when I ignored my evening run habit and split wood instead.

Charmaine’s Example

One Sunday at the coffee hour after church, I talked to my friend, Charmaine. She told me, “Hey, I started reading your book for moms last night, but never got beyond the third page. Change of plans. So many distractions. Lillian needed help with her Sunday School lesson. I had to sew a button on Christopher’s coat. Then Jed wanted to talk about something that happened at work. But I’ll get back to it. I promise. It really looks helpful!”

Charmaine has the right order of things. She won’t let a book on How To Be A Good Mom ** interfere with her being one. But we all can have that kind of problem. Sometimes we try discipline our lives so much, we fail to recognize a change in circumstance. Our Things To Do List no longer fits. But we plunge ahead because that’s what we planned.

We need to be willing to make adjustments in our schedule. That could mean we’ll accomplish God’s goals, His will for our life.

“We ought to look at our plans and say, if the Lord wills we should live and also do this or that” (James 4:15).

Sometimes we should stop exercising our spirit and put it to work instead, no matter what we previously set out to do.

Stephen Bly

Circa 1989

*Image by Finn Petersen from Pixabay

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“Change Of Plans Challenge” audio podcast by award-winning western author Stephen Bly. Sponsored by BlyBooks.com Legacy Series.
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How To Be A Good Mom

**A book often purchased with How To Be A Good Mom is Awakening Your Sense of Wonder, a good resource for Homeschool moms WONDER BOOK

Bly Family Project – Finishing Dad’s Last Novel blog article HERE FINISHING DAD’S NOVEL 

Awakening Your Sense of Wonder