Brandon Gilbert

When I first signed up to review the book, Plan B: What do you do when God doesn’t show up the way you thought he would? I didn’t realize that I would actually be using the book to help review my own life. Never has a book captured my attention, convicted me, and caused me to change my line of thinking quite like Plan B. And that was all within the first 25 pages.

Combining personal stories with the Biblical stories of David, Joseph (of The Coat of Many Colors fame), Ruth, and Joshua, Pastor and Author Pete Wilson tells the story that is universal to all of us: We will all have a Plan B moment. That moment when our own plans don’t turn out the way we thought they should and we have to start over on those plans or start a completely new plan altogether.

Central to the theme of the book is that while we sometimes associate our own plans succeeding as being in God’s favor, that doesn’t mean that because our plans fail that God has abandoned us. This was especially relevant to me as I continue to travel through my own Plan B moment. I understand the temptation to think that God has abandoned me when things seem to always go wrong ,and have given into that temptation more than once.

Plan B has helped me tremendously to understand that while I may not know what God has in store for me, I can always remember that he IS with me. Everyday, many people begin their own Plan B moments. I highly recommend this book for them.

*Note: Thomas Nelson Publishers provided me with a free advanced copy of this book for review, however opinions expressed are mine entirely.

Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It’s God’s gift from start to finish! We don’t play the major role. If we did, we’d probably go around bragging that we’d done the whole thing! No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.
-Ephesians 2:7-10 (The Message)

I remember the first dirty diaper Ryne had. I had never changed a dirty diaper in my entire life, yet as soon as I realized what the problem was, I was compelled to make him clean again. The diaper change itself was a harrowing experience, as I had both sets of his grandparents and his great-grandfather in the room. There were thousands of diaper changes’ worth of experience watching me as I decided I was going to change the diaper.

I felt like a soloist at Carnegie Hall as I opened his diaper to double-check. I kept thinking, “there’s so many people in here, and I’ve never done this. Do I ask for help, or fake it?” The room seemed to close in on me, but that could just be the effect of 8 people in a 10×10 room. As I got the diaper open, my worst fears were confirmed that this was indeed a “dirty bomb.”

When babies are born, they don’t have normal poop at first. They first have to get rid of all that goo that they were swimming in for 9 months. So what comes out is this black tar substance that closely resembles Nickelodeon GAK that has gone bad. Bravely, I took center stage in front of my audience and went to work. I took out all the tools I thought I would need: diaper and wipes. I removed his old diaper and began cleaning the affected area. It was what you might call a “political diaper” because there was a smear campaign going on. It was definitely more than a one-wipe job. I handled it quite well, however, if I do say so myself. I made pretty good time and Ryne was surprisingly cooperative for a newborn. Then it happened; every parent-with-a-son’s worst nightmare: He peed. This was before I learned the lesson to cover him up during changes. The only saving grace was that he seemed to favor laying on his side and had turned to the side when he did it. The only casualties were his blanket and his t-shirt.

It was at this moment my restoration project also became an underwater salvage mission. I got him dried off and cleaned up. A brand new diaper was placed correctly, and I changed his T-shirt. He cried a bit when I had to change the T-shirt, but once I got the new one on he stopped crying as if to signal “I’m clean now.” I picked him up, very proud of myself to have handled such a situation with no prior experience. The crowd roared with appreciation (in my head). The actual crowd that was there just continued to ooh and ahh over the baby. That’s OK, I know that diaper changes are a thankless job.

Now, after at least a thousand diaper changes under my own belt, I think about why I am able to do something I once would have considered quite disgusting. The main reason is that he is my child, and he is unable to clean himself. When he soils himself, he knows that he has done something that he regrets. It makes him uncomfortable and unhappy. He knows that when it happens, the only way to rectify it is to cry out.

It is the same way with us and our Father. When we soil ourselves with sin, God wants nothing more than to change us and make us clean. He knows that there is no way for us to do it ourselves. He waits for us to realize that we cant do it on our own and cry out to Him and ask Him to make us clean. He wants to change the diaper of our soul. He wants to take away the bad and exchange it with a newness that will make us whole.

I also know that Ryne is going to do it again. No matter how many times I change his diaper, I know that in a few hours (and sometimes not even that long) I will be changing it again. He can’t help it. It’s his nature, just like it is our nature to soil ourselves with sin. It’s not our human nature that makes us sin. Humans were created in the image of God. It is our fallen nature that causes us to sin. God knows that we are fallen, and He knows that He can clean us. The only difference is that God sent His Son, Jesus, to make a single sacrifice to cover all our sins. While we will soil ourselves forever, there was only one change that God had to make to cover them all.

“Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” There are likely no words in history that have hurt a father more than those words. As translated by The Message, it means “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” These were the last words of Jesus as he hung on the cross. It wasn’t just his God that Jesus was talking to, but also his Father. While the Bible does not share explicitly what God was doing while Jesus was dying, I imagine he most likely couldn’t watch the proceedings.  His Son, whom He loved, was bearing some of the cruelest torture that humans had ever inflicted.

Not only was His Son dying, but Jesus also felt abandoned by His Father. Here was His Son beaten and battered and about to die all while feeling He had to do it alone. The worst part of it for God had to be the fact that He was the primary cause for all the pain. He had sent His Son to this fate. That’s how much He loved us: He was willing to put his own child through the pain for us. A parent hurts so much more when their child hurts. To know that you caused the pain of your child cuts deeper than any knife.

I’ve never sent my Son to die for anyone else, and you would die of asphyxiation if you’re holding your breath for that to happen. I have however caused my son to hurt. The pain that spreads through the heart of a parent when they do something that hurts their child is almost unbearable. My son has Eczema. We don’t know exactly what triggers outbreaks, but we do know that he has a sensitivity to dairy that is an automatic outbreak if he gets any in his system.He is eating solid foods these days, but his Mommy still breast feeds him as well because there’s vital nutrients and immune boosters in there. So, whatever Mommy eats, he eats as well.

One evening  I was preparing dinner for my wife and I. Because of our son’s food sensitivities, we have taken to reading labels like they’re the Great American Novel. We did let one item slip through the cracks, however, when we bought some spaghetti sauce that we have always bought. We didn’t check the label like the other stuff we’ve been buying and we were hit with a surprise when, you guessed it, it contained cheese. Luckily, we caught this error before we fixed any spaghetti, and replaced the sauce with an organic sauce that contained no cheese or milk. On this particular night, we were going to have Chili. I had everything cooking when it came time to add some tomatoes to the chili. As you can imagine, adding tomatoes to a meal is hard when you’ve forgotten to buy the tomatoes. I had everything almost ready and really didn’t have a chance to get to the store. I looked through our cupboard to see if we had any tomato paste or sauce. That’s when I saw the milk-infested spaghetti sauce. I thought to myself, this recipe doesn’t call for much tomato, I can add a little of this sauce to get a bit of a tomato taste in there. The thought that didn’t enter my mind was, You’re an idiot. You and your wife just had a discussion about how this sauce is an enemy to your child’s well-being.

My wife came home, and we both ate and enjoyed our meal. It was quite tasty and, of course, poison to my son. The next day his face was swollen and red. His eyes were swollen and teary. His skin starts scaling and flaking off. To top all of that off, he was teething pretty fierce. We looked at our poor little guy and we kept going over in our heads everything we had done that could have contributed to this outbreak. It all came rushing back when Jamie mentioned how good the seasoning was in the Chili we ate. I was about to gloat about my secret ingredient being the spaghetti sauce when I suddenly remembered the conversation with Jamie about how she couldn’t eat it because of the milk. I was immediately sick to my stomach. There hasn’t been this much terror over a secret ingredient since Charlton Heston discovered that “Soylent Green is people!”

I immediately went into apology overdrive. I promised my son that I would never hurt him again, he could have a car, and there may have been a promise or two about buying him his own private island. I don’t really remember the specifics as I was too distraught to think clearly. I looked into his puffy, teary eyes to see the pain he was going through. To know I was the cause of that suffering was almost too much to bear. As hard as it was to see him going through it, though, I knew he would come out the other side OK. I don’t believe I could watch him die as Jesus did, and I’m not sure that God was able to, either.

Through this time, I have learned much more about what God has actually given us as our Father. When my son was born, he weighed six pounds and 9 ounces. He was so small that he had to grow into his newborn clothes. I remember the first time that the nurse placed him in my arms. At that moment I knew that I would give him the universe at that very moment if he asked. At the very least, I would die trying. I loved him so much, and all he had done was to just come into this world. I had known him for only seconds, yet he was more important to me than anyone else in this world.

Sometimes, I take a look at my son in his crib and I think about him as God must have thought about Jesus. I imagine that in 30 years or so, he will be taken and beaten. He will be tortured within an inch of his life. Then he will be made to carry the device of his own death through town as people spit and hurl insults at him. He will be nailed to wood with spikes through his tender skin. He will have a spear thrust into his side. As the heat bears down on him, his body will finally be so broken that it gives out. Yet before his final breath, he will ask forgiveness for the people who do this to him. He will do all this because he loves those people so much, just as I love them. He will do this to pay for their transgressions. He is perfect, there is no blame with him.

It takes an iron will just to write those words. Just thinking about my son enduring that pain makes me want to hurt a lot of people and keep him safe forever. This makes the sacrifice that God and His Son made for us all the more amazing. God loved me so much, he was willing to let His Son go through all of that just so I would be able to have a relationship with Him. Even knowing that my Son would come be with me for three days and then return to Earth with a healed body would not allow me to put him through that. It is an infinite love God has to be able to do that for us. And I am positive that when we, His children, hurt…He hurts more.

It’s 3:24 AM as I start to write this, so I apologize if it rambles or is incoherent. I was awaken by a hungry 7 month old, but his Mommy took care of that. As I lay in bed, I couldn’t get back to sleep and was in one of those modes where the mind races, while the body wants to attack the mind and put it in a sleeper hold.

I feel as though I’ve come to a crossroads in my life. Next month I will turn 29. It’ll be the last year of my twenties. I am not conceited enough to believe I am old by any means, nor do I feel 30 is an undesirable age. It does however make me stop and take stock of things, and what I find I do not like. Don’t get me wrong, there is plenty that is good in my life. I have the most wonderful help-mate in Jamie (who despite the phrase being cheesed-up in Jerry McGuire, really does complete me). I have the sweetest, cutest little boy. His adventures in teaching me what it means to be a Dad is what fuels this blog. I have two wonderful parents who brought me up in what appears to be the most stable of home environments I’ve seen. I have wonderful in-laws who love us and raised their daughter to be the most amazing woman. I have grandparents who are great, and despite my lack of siblings, I have several cousins that grew up with me like brothers and sisters.

However, when taking stock there’s also a lot I don’t like at all. The number one problem with most of it is procrastination. For as long as I can remember I have always put off things until the last minute. I don’t know why I do it. But, there are things from the age of being a teenager that I said I was going to do, but 10-15 years later, I still haven’t done them, and I continue to add to this list daily. This isn’t some bucket list where I haven’t traveled to Japan or ran with the Bulls in Pamplona. (not a big deal, by the way…if I want to run with bulls, there are plenty of them on Jamie’s Grandfather’s farms in Lawrence County, AL, but I digress…) This is stuff that should help me be a better person in better health and in better position to take care of my family financially and to help my fellow man.

The first thing that has gotten in the way is repeated abuse of the number 1 commandment. Exodus 20:3 says “No other gods, only me.” (From The Message, because I love the simplicity of the statement). Now, I have never carved out a god and built a throne for it. I have never melted down gold and turned it into a golden calf. I cannot, however, count how many things over the years that I have allowed to become more important to me than God. So many things have robbed me of time from Him. Not only that, I’ve allowed things to rob time away from myself that would benefit me in being able to be the man I ought to be. I’ve allowed things to rob my wife of time that is best spent together, especially since time together is such a commodity with the little fella around.

I’ve always heard that the first step to solving a problem is admitting that you have one. Well, I’m admitting it. I have a problem, and truth be told I have many problems. I don’t want to have them anymore. I want to be able to be the Father my son needs me to be. I want to be a great example to him and show him how we’re supposed to live out this short time that we’re given. I want him to know to make the most of this life. But he’ll never be able to see any of that unless I can live it out in front of him.

I am making several goals to achieve by my 30th Birthday. I recently read an article by Michael Hyatt, the CEO of Thomas Nelson publishing on the 6 keys to achieving big goals. One of those keys is to go public with your commitment. So I amgoing public with some of my goals. These are not New Years Resolutions, these are life changes I want to am going to make.

I will:
1. Have my first book published.
2. Lose 120 lbs.
3. Make sure my time spent reading and learning outweighs time spent watching television.
4. Volunteer my time with those less fortunate than I.
5. Find out if the last goal I listed is grammatically correct.
6. Remember that my relationship with God is one of Father and Son, and not one of Genie and Master.

These are just some of my goals. I have a lot to work on. One thing is for sure, I have to quit procrastinating. I’ve wasted almost 30 years doing that. That’s why when I felt I needed to write this out, I did so at 3:30 in the morning. If you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading.

Well, here’s the big surprise. I launched my own website for the blog. I know it was comfy looking at the other one, but I think you’ll get used to this one as well. There’s a lot of advantages for me to have my own place instead of it being hosted at wordpress.com. For one thing, I’ve shortened my URL by a whopping 6 characters! OK, so that’s not that important, but I can do things with my own place I couldn’t at the other site. Like, for starters…my friends with iPhones and smart phones can have an easier blog reading experience with my nifty iPhone plugin that makes my blog pretty on smart phones. *Note* I have only tested on the iPhone. But anyway, have a look around and tell me what you think!