A New Day Under a Washed Blue Sky

(photo by Tabitha Bird)

There is a plan. Even if there doesn't appear to be. Especially if their doesn't appear to be, there is a plan.
Lately I have been hanging on this though with a white knuckled grip.
Brisbane has flooded. No, I didn't loose my home. No I didn't loose my family. But I live in a city in morning. Matt and I lost thousands of dollars worth of exhibit stands that out company builds and stores in a warehouse in Rocklea. The warehouse was gutted. Literally. The owners of the warehouse are close friends of ours. They work in the exhibit design industry the same as our family. They have built their company from the ground up, the same way we are building ours. And they lost everything. There is no insurance because Brisbane flooded in 1974 and those areas that were affected then couldn't get flood insurance after. Rocklea was one of those areas.

Like everyone, we will carry on. You do. You just do. In all this I also have a book that I have queried. Not the best of times perhaps, but who knew my city was going to flood the very week I chose to send a query letter? So I wait. For life in Brisbane to begin again and for the pages of my own life to turn. And sometimes, just sometimes, in the quite of an afternoon, when the sky exhales and the sun lays its head on the horizon, I lay my head down too.

While I was away recently, stuck up the Sunshine Coast unable to get back to Brisbane because of road closers, I sat watching this man fishing. On the edge of a sand bag jetty covered with the murk of sea moss while the beach behind him swelled with he drift wood and debris of flood water now washed into the ocean waters he threw in a fishing line. I wondered if he had family he couldn't get back to. I wonder if he had a house in Brisbane currently going under. And if he did, why fish? With all this devastation around us, why try to catch anything?

Then last night I was watching this movie. The lead character is in the back of a Hummer with bombs turning the sky a burnt orange. the bridge they have to cross to escape is blown sky high. He laughs and turns to one of his mates and says. "There's always a plan. Even when there's doesn't appear to be, there is always a plan."

I sat in the unnatural flickering light of the TV and everything stopped for me. I asked myself what I believed.
Is there a plan? A being greater than myself who is in control? Is there a God? And if I believe that, which I do, then isn't He still in control even now? Even when there seems to be no plan?
Yeah. I know. It's probably not what everyone else watching the movie was thinking, but that's me. I'm seldom on the same thought plane as others anyway :)

I finally understood the point of fishing, even after a storm, even while Brisbane floods and a people grieve. There is a plan, even when I can't see it. And sometimes that's enough to know.
As long as there is still an ocean there is a chance a to throw your line in. To be apart of the living. And to see what might become of a new day under a washed blue sky.

So tonight I whisper to all the shaking parts inside me. "There is a plan. Even when there doesn't appear to be, there is always a plan."

What about you? Ever believed there was a plan even when there didn't appear to be one?