Man Proposes. God Disposes

I need to back up a few years here - because there are a few details that I must share if my next post is to make any sense at all.

My husband, Mr. M, is a retired teacher. He is a bit young to be retired - and in fact the PLAN (our plan) was he would work till 60 then retire as promptly as possible. We never planned on him working past 60 - not at that job. It was so stressful that most of the teachers we knew who tried to eek out a few more years for the pension ended up with major stress related conditions and did not exactly have a chance to ENJOY that retirement.

So OUR plan was, 60, out, and on to something else.

But the district where Mr. M worked is in a state of major flux and with that a lot of stressors got rolled down to the teachers. The year before he retired he picked up a International Bacalaurete (IB) position. They were supposed to have all the curriculum ready to go - but they did not - or what they had was non conforming to standards. So Mr M. wrote up all the curriculum as he went along. He got about 4 hours a night that entire school year.

The next year he was so run down he caught Mono - and so stubborn he tried to keep working. The end result was he ended up very very sick.

It was during this time period we were preparing adoption paperwork - Joe was so sick we held up a bit on submitting our paperwork to be sure we knew he was going to be OK.

The end result of this was that Joe eventually got enough better we knew it would be ok. But it was a serious enough event that he decided (with good medical advice) not to go back to teaching at his district. (Apparently with enough stress this can come back)

No problem, right? China would send our referral in the next 7 months or so, Mr M would be a stay at home parent. I have a job I really love 8 out of 10 days, so I would continue work until we can afford to both retire.

OK - we all know that China did not exactly send us that referral 2 years ago.

Eventually Mr M got MUCH better and got a bit bored. But he was still 90% and not really into long drives. So he went to the CLOSEST hospital and signed up as a volunteer. He became a wheelchair jockey.

And as he was wheeling his new friends around he would see patients alone in their rooms. One day he walked into the Chaplain's office and asked if they would like someone to visit with paitients and pray with them.

And that is how Mr. M became a volunteer hospital chaplain.

The fact is he is good at it. He has a compassionate heart and a natural way of working with people in sad and stressful situations. Basically, he was born to do this.

And we praise God for giving him the opportunity to exercise this underused gift of his.

One defination of grace is mercy undeserved. We have seen grace in our lives.