Planners, NPers and FPers

Some of us are Planners. Meticulous and rather ridiculous methodical planners, we spend a lot of time laying out our life like a checkerboard square. We know what we will be doing today, this week, next month and exactly where we plan to be on our checkerboard by the end of the year. We have car insurance, home insurance, life insurance, loss of income insurance, and probably insurance for not having insurance.

There is a plan in place for every piece of life. You better believe that we have plotted out how much retirement income we will have at our disposal, how long we will have been married to the same spouse, where we will be living, and even how many grandkids will be pulling on our pant legs to get our undivided attention. And exactly where we will be standing during the next solar eclipse.

Then there’s the No-Planners. NPers deliberately plan to have no plan. They don’t believe in laying out their life in such a cut and dried scheme. Preferring to let life be an adventure with surprises that make it interesting. They would rather be surprised and enjoy the good things that come their way, much like cool summer rain showers that come out of the blue. And the bad storms that will inevitably roar around the corner at them? “Not gonna waste my time worrying and planning. I’ll deal with them when they finally hit.”

Everybody else falls into another large category called Fuzzy-Planners. We may plan diligently, but have trouble carrying through physically. There’s nothing quite like promising yourself, “Not gonna worry myself into a frenzied dither over possibly losing my job next week. I am gonna stay cool and wait to see what happens.” Only to find that you not only obsessed about it, but you have beaten yourself up for breaking that very promise. Not cool.

Fuzzy-Planners realize they aren’t part of the NP loose-jointed crowd, just able to roll with the flow. They usually feel most secure when they know the monthly bills can be met, potatoes, eggs, and beans are available in the kitchen, and they actually have a kitchen. But still, FPers don’t feel the obsessive drive to control every tiny square inch of their life, either. “I like adventure and surprises, just not the bowl-me-over-kind.” A lot of FPers out there.

No matter which category you fit, by now you have probably found out that you simply don’t get your way, each and every day. Life for you happens the way your Creator knows that you need it to happen. Sometimes fun, sometimes scary, sometimes heartbreaking.

Why? To make you into the you He has in mind. Always pleasant? You certainly know better. It evidently takes mountaintop happy times and the steep valleys of heartache to mold us into the person He wants.
No one on this earth gets to own a permanent flat plateau on a mountaintop. Unfortunately.