The Plan vs Plan B
The Plan was to travel the world.
The Plan was to become an editorial or commercial photographer sent on work assignments to Italy. Or maybe…
The Plan was to stay in school forever, make home-base in some enlightened college town and get my Ph.D in Philosophy, while I studied six months at a time in Italy.
The Plan was to be a free-spirit, marry rich, live in a villa in Italy, and be known as the crazy, fun-loving American.
The Plan was to live an awesome, unencumbered life.
The Plan that particular Christmas was to come home for for less than a week before heading to Sharm El Sheik where that fantastic Italian man had invited me on Holiday.
The Plan was surely not to get pregnant.
The Plan was never to move home, back to the suburbs I grew up in, work front desk at a health club and raise a child sans father.
But The Plan did not account for those seemingly inconsequential events, those almost forgettable detours that turn out to be the Ultimate Game Changers of our life.
The Plan did not take into account what bad decisions can spring from good intentions and too much champagne.
(It was Christmas Eve 2005. I was back in town and driving through his mother’s neighborhood. I had a Christmas card to give her. We had stayed in touch even though her son and I were no longer together. It would be good of me to drop by her house and wish her well, because she was probably alone. I dropped by her house and she was not alone. She was hosting a party. He was there. They invited me in. What harm could come from just a few minutes? Afterall, it was Christmas. I accepted a glass of champagne and then another. He was being so sweet. The smell of nutmeg and Christmas made me forget why I moved to another state to be done with him. He filled my glass one more time full of champagne and I remembered what I found so attractive about him. I did not go home that night. At midnight, we visited his grandpa in the VA Hospital and then I went home with him).
Yes, it is the slight detours on our way home, the smallest side-steps on the path to our future, that change our life forever.
You’ve heard of how a butterfly flaps it’s wings and across the world a tsunami happens? Well, somewhere a butterfly flapped it’s wings, and all the conditions were set for me to get pregnant in Portland.
Enter Plan B. Faster than a hamster wheel down a bobsled track, my self-planned destiny was shot.
What’s strange about these things though, is that even while a dramatic shift is occurring in your life, you may not even be aware of it. I wasn’t. I went on, still running Plan A formulas in my mind, with no idea of what was to come until I was almost out of my first trimester. When I got up to speed with what was already going on in my body, I looked back on that moment that changed everything and said, “Really? That’s the point I tossed it all away? That foggy, inebriated moment was the game changer? But it doesn’t make any sense! My Plans were too meaningful to be hijacked by a one-night-stand. This cant be.”
But it was.
I woke up one night, alone, in a cold sweat with the thought that I was pregnant. I was terrified. But then, strangely okay. “I choose you,” a small voice said, “I choose you to be my mom.” Half asleep the voice gave me a peace that passes understanding and it put me back to sleep. When I woke up, the peace was nowhere to be found. I began to freak out and pray, pray, pray it was just a crazy dream. I would take a pregnancy test and find out I wasn’t pregnant at all and everything would be back to normal.
That day I was on my way to New Mexico and I called my best friend who was picking me up from the airport what was happening. We went straight from Baggage Claim at Albuquerque International Airport to Wallgreens. I bought the kind of pregnancy test that would leave nothing to interpretation, the kind that spelled out P R E G N A N T if you were, indeed, with child.
We drove around strip malls looking for the best public restroom. If I was about to find out that I was truly going to be somebody’s mother, I wanted the venue where that would take place to be somewhat classy. Arby’s was out. Dairy Queen was considered (if only for the consoling Blizzard available after), but what we really wanted to find was a Starbucks. Life just seems easier to handle when holding a Venti Soy Latte.
We settled on REI- the high end outdoor store, which always brought me good memories in the past, and a place that said Adventure is Awesome. I needed that kind of encouragment, seeing that I might well be on my way to the biggest adventure of my life.
Walking out of that bathroom, Ski jackets, sleeping bags and tents closed in on me. It took everything to keep from fainting: I was absolutely preggers and pretty sure everyone in the store could look inside me and see my secret. How the world already looked so different. Nothing would ever be the same again– not fleece, not Tephlon, not space-age technology long johns.
I made it to the car with my best friend’s help. I curled up in the passenger’s seat and wailed. Yes, wailed. I wailed like a human being who is convinced everything they ever wanted and worked for had been flushed down the toilet.
The future was suddenly empty of plans. My Plans were like an email I had been crafting for decades that, all of a sudden, had been wiped out- Gone. No recovery possible. Life as I knew it had been vacuum sucked down a black hole. I was left staring at the blankest of blank screens and praying a ridiculous prayer: “Maybe, just maybe if I stay completely still it will come back. I will not move a muscle.”
Pastor Pete Wilson in his book, Plan B says,
“People living in the midst of a Plan B often have that deer-in-the-headlights look about them. Maybe this is the first time they’ve faced a situation that is totally out of their control. So they’re frozen with fear, incapacitated with worry, so anxious about what has happened and what might happen next that they can’t make a choice or a change. Sometimes they can barely breathe.”
That was me: barely breathing, doe in the headlights. I don’t know what scared me more- the Unknown and Uncertainty I faced, or the Death of my oh-so-desired Destiny.
Those were some really hard times. Really hard times. The great news is, the story didn’t end there. Plan B, turns out, really isn’t the dead end I thought it was.
Pete Wilson also shares this in his book and it’s the parting thought I want to leave you with:
“Here is the deal when it comes to your shattered dreams and unmet expectations. When life doesn’t turn out the way you thought it was going to turn out, you may think you are losing control. but the truth is, you never had control in the first place. The only thing you do control is how you respond to your disappointments and your unexpected obstacles. And here you have some options.”
Single motherhood was the last place I ever thought I’d find myself, but it was also the door to everything in my life now.
What about you? Where have you experienced Plan B in your life?
