Facing The Unpredictability Of LifeExemplo

SUBMITTING TO GOD'S WILL

After refusing nearly a dozen lucrative offers from companies in Indonesia, my husband finally decided to take up an offer after much prayer and guidance from the Lord. We were to immediately relocate to Semarang and stay there for six months and then move to the head office in Jakarta. Not wanting to change school midyear for our boys, we negotiated to stay in Semarang for a year and then move to Jakarta which was accepted by the company. In my enthusiasm of moving countries, I was telling everybody that we were going to Semarang for a year and then we would move to Jakarta.

It was then the Lord spoke to me from the passage in James which talks about suffixing our plans with the phrase ‘God willing’ with the attitude of submitting ourselves to the will of God. Having been brought up in a Christian family which emphasized on how everything happens according to the will of God and to prefix our plans with ‘God willing,’ I repented and my language did change.

The move to Semarang was good in some ways and bad in other ways, but knowing that we were in the center of God’s will kept us going. In faith we paid a year’s fees for our two sons. Six months down the line, my younger son was diagnosed with leukemia and all our plans were shattered. We needed to go back to India for my son’s treatment and he passed away in three months.

In our journey with our son in the hospital with leukemia, things changed by the day, sometimes by the hour. We started living one day at a time. We never knew what tomorrow held for us.

In our plans, in June 2013 we were to move to Jakarta as a family of four, but in September 2013 we were back in Jakarta living in the same apartment we had planned to stay, now as a family of three. Only that now my husband was working in another company.

It felt that our plans were fulfilled but not the way we had planned it. I have learnt that we make plans but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails. There was a time I dreaded to plan ahead, but God has healed me and our family and we are back to making long-term plans ‘God willing.’