You need to have a procedure done…but I know the plans.

I need to fly out to conduct a seminar a few days after having outpatient surgery…thoughts and plans for welfare and peace.

The case has been sent to the DA’s office…to give you a hope in your final outcome.

The pathology report will be ready in about a week…but I know the plans.

It was the most difficult time I had ever experienced in the then fourteen years that I had been involved in missions.  I enjoyed my job as a teacher, since it involved discipling high-schoolers and overseeing teachers as well.  Some of my students had even had their birthday parties at my apartment just behind the school.  I was much more involved in their lives than I had been in those of my American Spanish students and track team members.  I was teaching these students things of eternal value, and that made all the difference.

How could it be, then, that they could be swayed by the new teacher to tell lies and launch allegations against the principal and me?  How could someone who had only worked there for six weeks wreak such havoc, endangering the school’s very existence?  I could go to jail, if the authorities believed them!

But I know the plans I have for you…says the Lord.

The words of the investigator from the Ministry of Education were reason to rejoice: the kids obviously love you.  We have had cases like this before where someone who had been discontent with a supervisor brought charges, nearly shutting schools down.  No te preocupes.  Not to worry.

Praise God!  But now what?  More accusations?  This could really be serious!

But I know the plans…

In the midst of this stressful situation, I started to have physical problems, ones I thought were solved a few years before by surgery.

“This time, I am only going to do a minor procedure,” said the doctor.

“You know, you could sue them for the things they wrote in the newspaper about you,” my lawyer friend and the mother of one of my students informed me as I lay in recovery.  Then the doctor arrived, reassuring me that all had gone well.

“Make an appointment when you return form your trip and we will look at the pathology report.”

Pathology report?!  Doesn’t that mean cancer?!  I thought, I just want to get back to my place and my bed.

Oh yes, those lovely kids who celebrated their birthdays in my apartment?  One would be celebrating her fifteenth in my place a few hours later.  Never mind that I had told her mother I would be having minor surgery that day.  “Oh, that’s OK, we won’t make too much noise.”  Hello…!  Thoughts of peace….

“Ladies and gentlemen, in a few minutes we will begin our descent”  …It was my second trip to Trinidad and Tobago, just a hop, skip, and a jump from Colombia.  The students there were shocked in class the next morning when I informed them that less than a week earlier I had been in the hospital.  Thankfully, the weekend seminar was cancelled, and I was able to physically rest before the Monday sessions.  Nevertheless, as I rested and reviewed my notes, thoughts of jail and cancer crowded my mind.

Each time the Father would gently remind me: I know the thoughts and plans I have for you, thoughts and plans for welfare and peace and not for evil.

And He gave me peace.

And the accusations were put to rest.

And the pathology report was all clear.

Now, years later, as I seek direction concerning the next phase of my life as a global woman and educator, I again hear His voice whispering in my ear…I know the plans I have for you…  Hopefully He will share them with me soon!

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