Grasping at Plan A

I recently read Pete Wilson’s book, Plan B. You can read my review here.  After reading the book, I was reflecting on one of those moments when my wife and I had to face a Plan B.

We had only been married 2 years when we found out that we were expecting our first child.  It was an exciting and nervous time.  We were young and hadn’t planning financially for the addition to our family but we were over-joyed with the prospect at having the baby.  We began dreaming.  We picked names.  We did all the things goofy, newly-expecting parents do.  Heck, I even read books to my wife’s stomach.

At 4 months my wife went in for her first ultrasound.  I was working at a new job so I couldn’t leave work to be with her so her mother joined her for the visit.  They were able to find out that we were having a little girl.  My wife was so excited that she stopped by my place of work to share the news.  I still remember how excited she was that she was having a little girl.  She was worried that I would be disappointed that the baby wasn’t a boy.  I told her that was silly … I was just hoping for what every parent dreams of – a healthy baby.  I mean, that is Plan A, right?

Two days later on December 23rd, 1992, we were both sitting across from a doctor as she told us that our baby was a non-viable fetus and suggested that we abort the fetus.

Plan B had kicked in full force.  Our thoughts went from dreams of a little girl with pigtails to picking up the pieces of a broken dream.  In his book, Plan B, Pete details several of the mechanisms that people go through when facing that moment.  Some try to run. Others become paralyzed.  For sure, my wife and I faced some of those very emotions and conditions.

But in my reminiscing about those days following the visit to the doctor, I remembered something else.  I remember trying to grasp for Plan A.  I was still mired in Plan B but I remember having conversations with friends and family that centered on grasping for the original plan.  Plan A was to have the healthy baby.  The conversation went along this line:

Whatever happens, we are going to try for another child as soon as possible.

Looking back that seems so naive.  Instead of trying to work through the present Plan B, I had wanted to recover Plan A even though, truth be told, that plan was forever gone.  The child my wife carried would never be healthy.  She had already been labeled non-viable … the doctor’s had already wrote her off.

While I was grasping at a lost plan A,  God was still working on the plan that He had in place all along.  Let me introduce to you how our Plan B worked out:

She gets excited over babies.

She loves animals.

She gets into music on her iPod .. especially Reba!

She puts up with her daddy.

Oh.. and she really adores chocolate cake!

Lauren and I shared that slice of cake during a recent daddy-daughter date.  We followed dessert with a movie and, interestingly enough, the movie was Letters to God.  The movie is about a community that is impacted by a young man dealing with the Plan B in his life.  It was a poignant moment for me as I shared that movie with my Plan B.

Sometimes it is good not to reach the things that you are grasping after… you just might miss some pretty miraculous moments.