One night,

Jacob was feeling particularly rotten about our choice.. and to lay it out there, by "choice" he means: the day we partook in the kind of sex that produces a fetus that then must be accounted for to the point of an entire life recon resulting in marriage and adulthood aka a tornado or "the mistake" or "their sin" or whatever verbiage you'd have in mind to attach to the ever-lengthening label on our lives.





Anyway, my response was this:





"We're not God's Plan B."





What I meant was: It's not as though God had a Plan A, aka life before "the mistake", and then when we had sexual intercourse he was all like 'Oh no! What to do..what to do...? Well, I suppose I'll have to do this (Plan B).'





I'm sorry..I don't know everyone's theology, but mine says that to think God has Plan Bs is completely inconsistent with believing he's omniscient and omnipotent, and aren't those characteristics the foundation of what we believe about him? Are we supposed to pick and choose which things we are to believe about our Creator?





When we look at it like this, simplified & amplified, sure.. it seems silly to believe conflicting things about God, but the thing is, people, we do it anyway. All the time. I mean..I see it everywhere. We walk around proclaiming all these truths, when the reality is that, added together, they don't add up to Truth. He can't be in control while at the same time onlooking with tears in his eyes about what we didn't let him control. He either is, or he isn't, and I choose to believe that he is.





God wasn't scared or surprised when we did what we did and, in fact, I'm not entirely sure he wept. Maybe he wept for how we felt, how afraid we were, and the pain we felt when others couldn't even look at us because of our sin, but he knew. He saw it coming. He had this planned, because he doesn't need a Plan B. Jacob isn't some guy I got stuck with and we just happen to be making it work because of our discipline and prayer and commitment to one another.





Why do I say that? Well, take a look at this realistic assessment and decide for yourself..





Discipline: We don't pay bills on time because we're too busy watching episodes of scrubs or grey's anatomy. We leave the stove on overnight sometimes because we forget to turn it off after we cook up our midnight snack of frozen chicken wings. I don't come home until 4 a.m. most nights, and Jake doesn't always brush his teeth. Oh, and we've both got tires forming around our middles.





Prayer: I don't pray. I don't believe it to be necessary until I do, and then it is. Jake might pray, but not often enough to hold up my end too, and we don't pray together.





Commitment: We've both cheated in our own ways. Yup. How's that for honesty?





So..what do you think? You think our marriage is still intact (and not only that, but our love for each other, too?) simply because we've been doing what it takes to make it work? There is no other explanation of our current relationship than: God wants it. He wants it and he wants our daughter and he wanted it from the beginning and he's making it happen. Maybe we help him out, make it a little easier, every now and then by doing what he says, but ultimately..this was no surprise to him. He is in control.





We're not God's Plan B.





And I really wish everyone would stop looking at us like we are.