I have to admit that most Sundays I am too busy shushing kids to hear much of what is said in church. I wish it was different, but we aren’t to the listening stage just quite yet. So when I heard something on Sunday that not only made sense because I heard the entire thought, but resonated with me because I had time to ponder on it, I was understandably shocked.

Someone talked about “backdoor blessings”,  or blessings that come when other things don’t work out (think “when God closes a door he opens a window”). I love this idea because my life is filled with rarely recognized “backdoor blessings”.

I’m a planner, I like to know what I am doing each and every single day, I like to think that my plans are relatively well thought out and researched. And when I say I like a plan, I mean I really like a plan. I also like to assume that my plan is the best plan because I think that I am generally a competent person. I need to add that in an attempt to not seem as obsessive as I am sometimes I pretend I’m winging it, trust me if you knew the insanity going on in my head you would be shocked at how relaxed I appear.

Given the above information you won’t be shocked that when things don’t go according to plan I am a tad bit frustrated. I am great at arguing with God, I’m great at lecturing Him on the merits of my plan, and pretty terrible about accepting His will when it contradicts mine.

This is why backdoor blessings resonated with me. I can’t count the number of times when life didn’t go according to plan, but the end result was even better than I imagined. You’d think by this point in time I would give in and just accept that my best laid plans may not be the ONLY option… yeah haven’t accepted that yet.

But as I sat in church thinking about this, and then continued to think about it throughout the day… and night… I was struck by how the turning point moments in my life came about because my plans (often good plans) didn’t turn out just quite right.

Mr. Spreadsheets and I got married the summer between our sophomore and junior years of college. We were young…probably too young to be making decisions beyond what to order at Taco Bell but for some reason 20 year olds are allowed to make major life decisions. We were in a place where people married young and started their families early, and we decided that was the best plan for us. We prayed about that decision and felt that yes starting a family was the path we needed to take. I started my junior year of college expecting our first child due just after our first anniversary, we were on the BYU path! But it didn’t work out and at first I was so angry. I had been reluctant to head down that path in the first place, but felt that was what we needed to do and when it didn’t work out how we expected the result just seemed cruel.

But here’s the deal, shortly after I explained to my art history professors that no I was not a slacker trying to avoid taking midterms but yes I had actually be in the hospital having a miscarriage, I discovered that Public Health was a major option.

You know how sometimes you find a pair of jeans (or yoga pants let’s get real) that just work. You try them on and it’s like they were made for you, that’s what Public Health was for me. I loved my major, I woke up excited to learn, read the textbooks like novels, and genuinely enjoyed my classes. When it came time to finish my bachelors degree, I applied to graduate school, and though I maintain that I was the least qualified person in my cohort, I was accepted and graduated with a degree that changed the way I see the world and continue to use nearly every day.

None of this would have ever happened if I hadn’t found myself in an emergency room late one October night. I would never have learned that 1 in 4 pregnancies result in a miscarriage or felt the confusion and anger necessary to reassess my choices. I’m fairly certain that the reason we felt sure about starting our family was because this was the only way I would stumble into this option. Our first child was born five years later, by the time he arrived I had finished college and graduate school and started my first legit job, and I’m certain that was when he was meant to arrive, This backdoor blessing worked out much better than my original plan.

As I look back over the past two years I’m pretty sure that Mr. Spreadsheets delayed promotion was a backdoor blessing. I was so upset when he wasn’t chosen for the job, I couldn’t understand why someone else was chosen over him- he works really really hard, but now it’s starting to make sense. While he didn’t get the job, we got to spend an extra year in a place we loved with the very best people. If we hadn’t been sure that our time was short, we wouldn’t have enjoyed our time as much or worked to strengthen those relationships. So while I am still annoyed he wasn’t chosen, I’m starting to appreciate the backdoor blessings associated with that change in plan and I’m trying to figure out why we were sent to Georgia because there’s got to be a reason we left God’s Country.

I guess this is my very long and convoluted way of saying that sometimes things work out better than I thought they would and that it might be ok (sometimes) to trust in someone else’s plans and until I am able to lighten up a bit I’m going to keep looking for the “hand of God” and backdoor blessings because they’re always there waiting to be discovered.