I’ve been working on the plan for next year.

Now plans are a tricky thing. Because they cannot be guaranteed to work out just the way we envision them.

With any plan there are elements of it that we can control, that we can ensure and that has the locus of control right in our hip pocket so to speak.

But then there are the elements of any plan that depend on others, on specific circumstances and details and assumptions that once in the midst of the plan we realize will not jive.

Plans usually have the hows and wherefores down. ‘We will do such and such at this time and in that manner.’

(I’m pretty sure this sets us up for failure)

I’ve made a plan like that for 2013. It was a good exercise. The process refined my thinking, opened up my creative planning, and really made me look at what can be done.

Rather than being stuck in overwhelm or waffling in confusion, unsure how to go forward and not knowing what can or can’t be done, the process of making a plan turns stalemates into forward action.

Every plan requires decisions made, the future envisioned and that certain crisis within us that takes on the courage necessary in order to go forward.

Plans are great things.

Yet, once the plans are made, so many things can go wrong.

The plan I’ve made has multiple holes in it. There is room for all sorts of error and miscalculation and simple misunderstandings.

For the plan isn’t just about me or for me, it is about and for a number of others.

My friend in Uganda, who originally invited me there wrote me about a month ago with this, “All we know Cyndy is we need you back in Uganda.” He had been speaking to the Pastors that I’d already been alongside and this was their conclusion.

My other friend and primary interpreter for much of my times in Uganda said this to me last August, “Okay Cyndy, you’ve been here three times now. It is time to make this more official. Raise up a team of us, teach us to carry on the work.”

So I’ve been praying and contemplating, digging deep and reaching farther into myself for this next leg of the journey, and I’ve come up with a plan.

It sounds good. It looks really good on paper. But like all plans, it will need its fair share of tweaking. For like any plan it is just a compilation of my own ideas. A general sketch so to speak of the year to come.

That sketch will be filled in with color and with light and with flesh on the bones. Most likely in ways I could have never foreseen.

There are cultural differences to take into account, differing world-views and expectations, and then the simple matter of logistics and technicalities. I really don’t know so much of how the year will work out.

So while the hard emotional labor has gone into the plan, while I’ve dug farther into myself to see what is really there, and while I’ve put words to what I envision and what I think is possible, I’m holding my plans loosely.

In open hands stretched out.

It’s now time to harness those plans with something that is even more powerful.

Commitment.

Pure and simple commitment.

The rough idea is laid in place. But the goal, the real goal, the end result that is the reason the plan was made in the first place, this is where our commitments reside.

Allowing the details of my best laid plans to fall to the wayside, reveals my commitment. ‘To grow a small team of forward thinking, visionary leaders, leading in humility kind of godly leaders within Uganda’

This I can commit to. This is really the plan.

How it will work out. Exactly. I haven’t the foggiest idea.

Yet taking it from a plan to a commitment we find incredible power. Not because of you or I, but because a commitment will draw from us more than we even know we have to offer.

It will be messy and unmanageable in many ways. There will be surprises every single step of the way. Some things will work and other things will not.

The power of commitment though, cuts through all that.

So my suggestion as we are nearing another year. Make your plan, yes.

Yet even more powerfully, what is your commitment?

For that is where things will happen.