His Plan, His Way, His Time

Carol Bannon ponders how Catholic mothers and grandmothers need to encourage their families to let God take the lead.

Commit your way to the Lord. Trust him, and he will act. (Psalm 37:5)

What is missing from this psalm? It is not easy for mothers and grandmothers to practice complete trust that what happens will be for the good of our families. We are told to commit our families to the Lord, and then trust and believe all will be great. We are taught to accept that His help will be according to His plan, it will be done His way, and it will be done in His time. This requires a lot of faith.

And for me, as a person who likes to be able to fix things, to solve problems, this can be especially hard to put into practice.

I was raised by parents whose mantra was "if there’s a will there's a way": just work hard to find the answer. Need to argue with a government agency? Locate the agency and bombard them with endless emails and phone calls until there is a solution. Have a dispute over medical coverage? Demand an explanation, have them review it, and even have your doctor resubmit with different coding. Not happy with a decision made in your school district? Attend the meetings, sign up to express your views and talk to others about your opinion to gather support.

But there are many more situations where God has to take the lead, and we need to let Him.

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Raising children is such a situation. So many issues arise where you need to ask God to take the lead, give you strength, to guide you on the best path for your child.

Last week my husband and I were coming home from camping with our grandchildren and their parents when he commented how great our kids turned out to be. Then we both cracked up laughing, recalling all those late-night phone calls, the angry principals, the curfew fights ... not to mention the minor skirmishes with the law. While we can laugh about it now, we both know we survived those times because we handed it over to God first, asking Him to help us find a way to help them.

And trust me, it was not easy! But God didn’t promise us life would be easy … just that He would help us. And He has!

He helped us maneuver several life-threatening medical issues.

He helped us find the means to send our children to college.

He helped us through periods of unexpected unemployment.

He helped us through the loss of our life’s savings.

He has always been there to help us—all we needed to do was ask.

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There are many situations where God has to take the lead, and we need to let Him. #CatholicMom

Now, as a grandmother watching my children raise their children, I feel God is needed more than ever. The distractions are endless. Between cell phones, gaming, Facebook, YouTube, messaging, TikTok, nameless strangers on the internet enticing them with unimaginable things, our children who are parents have a very difficult task. It seems as if they don’t have time to talk as a family, let alone attend church and pray as a family.

They turn more and more to Google and Alexa for answers, not God.

There are many reasons for this, but the single most obvious reason is we are an instant-gratification society, and God has never operated on instant gratification. As Catholic mothers and grandmothers, we need to share with them those times we truly turned to God for a special need, how long it took for our prayers to be answered, and how God answered our prayers. Many times, what I asked for was not what I received … it was better! Let them know God will always answer in the way best suited for their families.

"For everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened." (Matthew 7:8)

Teach them to ask for His help, to seek His answers, and to keep knocking on Heaven’s door. He will always answer our needs, we just have to learn to accept His plan, His way and His time.

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