Loving When A Plan Comes Together

 For folks of my generation, the 1980s was an interesting time for television.  At the time, many houses either got reception from a local cable provider (the "struttin' in high cotton" upper-class option then) or they were forced to wrestle a 30-foot monstrosity on the side of the house called an aerial antenna.  With the latter, if you were lucky you could pick up three local stations, which ironically were the three major TV networks of the time (ABC, NBC, and CBS).  So, prime-time TV was a big thing then.  For most of us, it consisted of some classic shows - The Dukes of Hazzard, MacGyver, and sitcoms such as The Golden Girls.  One particular show that was considered the most popular show of the decade was The A-Team, which centered around a quartet of four soldiers-of-fortune who were hired guns inadvertently protecting the "little guy" who was terrorized by a formidable antagonist.  The "team" was made up of handsome front-man "Face," eccentric former combat pilot Murdock, hulking muscle B.A. Baracus (played by Mr. T), and their leader, a cunning, resourceful former military colonel named "Hannibal" Smith, played by the late actor George Peppard.  Always with a smug self-assured and cocky grin with a cigar hanging out of his mouth, Hannibal always directed these operations with the efficiency of a well-armed guerilla leader, and at the end of every episode, when his team had successfully defeated a potential societal threat, Hannibal would nonchalantly grin and say "I love it when a plan comes together."  That phrase came to mind today as I considered my own situation, as looking back on a lot of things a lot is now unfolding to make perfect sense.  

We as human beings are noted to make plans, strategies, and objectives in our personal lives - it is part of the creative ability God gave us to distinguish us from the rest of creation, and the reason why in the earliest chapters of Genesis he bestowed Adam and his descendants (us) with dominion over the earth. However, in Genesis 3 a catastrophic thing happened - Eve ate of a fruit she was coerced by a supposed serpent into doing, then she gave it to Adam, and it was a flagrant act of disobedience against a God who had already given them all the hollow promises that Satan, in the form of that serpent, used to manipulate mankind into rebellion against God.  This led to the Fall, and human beings in subsequent generations paid for that with the attribute of concupiscence, and it made us limited.  Therefore, another consequence of the Fall is our glaring imperfections, both as a race and as individuals.  This means that sometimes, despite how detailed and failsafe our own plans are, they fall short.  That is God's reminder that he is there to guide us, and we would do well to rely on that.  Looking at Hannibal Smith's closing affirmation at the end of every A Team episode, I am reminded of something else I learned very recently that relates to it - often, when we rely on God's guidance, there may be some rough terrain to navigate, and when it seems like things are falling apart, they are actually falling into place.  A lot of times, it will only be through retrospection we see it, as our fallen state has made us rather dense when it comes to seeing the obvious sometimes, and if we had seen the obvious, it would have saved us a lot of trouble.  Thing is, the obvious is usually there, but our own blinders of concupiscence blind us to it.  This is where we need God more than anything.  That little devotional lesson prefaces what I wanted to talk about today.

My own plan, to use Hannibal Smith's rationale, has been coming together before my own nose without me even seeing it yet.  There were signs - there always are - about the direction we need to take, but often we dismiss them as the after-affect of spicy pepperoni on the cheap Little Caesar's pizza we had for supper out of the desire of not wanting to cook.  In a very specific case in my own life, I have seen signs for things for years, and only recently have they started actually making sense.  Let me tell the story.

The city of Baltimore has had a connection with our family that stretches back at least four generations. It started with the Appalachian migrations of the late 1940s and still is relevant today, although less so now.  Many poor West Virginia families came here to seek opportunity, since Baltimore was the closest urban center (well, there is Pittsburgh too, but for some reason it never had the attraction for our folks like Baltimore did) and offered many opportunities.  As a result, a subculture blossomed in this city that we created, and even when some of the older generation, financially secure enough to retire, returned home to the small towns in our state, they brought this Baltimore experience with them.  My family was no different in all honesty, and Baltimore played a big part in our collective family history as well as in mine personally.  Our family became so ensconced here as a matter of fact that many of my cousins were born and raised here, so we have a sort of sanguine beachhead in the area.  While many of the third- and fourth- generation cousins I have are now comfortably settled in suburbs outside the city in communities like Elkridge and Cockeysville, they all started here, and that start was due to their West Virginia grandparents coming here and settling in areas like Irvington and Pigtown in the western reaches of the municipal limits. Like many of my cousins, I too had some roots here too - I wasn't born here or anything, and in all honesty my stay here as a child was brief, but it was still a part of my story.  50 years ago at around this time, Mom and I traveled up from Georgia after she and Dad had a very intense separation, and in Dad's old white van Mom had taken, we traveled until we found a place to stay with my aunt Ruth and two of her younger kids, my cousins Greg and Gayle.  Ruth, who we all affectionately called "Aunt Pip," was at the time not in the best of health - she had multiple sclerosis and was largely bedridden and communicated in almost unintelligible words.  Often, if she was trying to get someone's attention - either Mom's, my cousin Greg's, or the visiting nurse, a kindly older Black lady we called Ms. Patrick - she would become frustrated as her brain didn't allow her to form the words she needed, and she would cry - looking back on that, I really felt bad for her, and I remember as a precocious 5-year-old asking Mom, "Why is Aunt Pip so sad Mom?"  During our sojourn in the city, we lived in three different rowhouses - all of them looking somewhat similar to the one I am sitting in now writing this - and I had begun my formal education as a kindergarten student at Steuart Hill Academy over on Gilmor Street, about a mile and a half west of where I am at now.  Even after moving away a time later, we still visited family here for many years. Baltimore was a part of the story now for me, but had been for at least a good 20 years prior to me being there. Like many things in our subconscious mind, Baltimore added itself to my memory bank, and over the years many dreams about being here have been part of my sleep experience.  A lot of times I just dismissed them as nice but insignificant things that probably consisted of my mind cobbling a lot of different and unconnected things together to create something, but then came the deja vu moments - I have had several of those.  And, beginning as early as 1997, Barbara and I were actually looking here to move and re-establish our lives, a choice we finally sort of acted on in 2016 as we began planning to make it happen - it did on New Year's Eve of 2016, our last day after 27 years in Florida, and within one week I was living in Maryland again, the first time in about 42 years.  At that point, it was just Hagerstown, but I was back where I believed I belonged anyway.  Dismissing those old Baltimore dreams as being somewhat satisfied by our move to Hagerstown, I didn't think more about them until I realized I was still having the dreams.  Then came 2024, when a culmination of things thrust us into moving here - losing our house, getting a new job in the city, and earning my long-sought Ph.D.  Almost a year later, here I sit, in the midst of eastern Baltimore, in the heart of the city, and that leads to more pertinent observations.

This part of Baltimore I am sitting in now - it is a neighborhood called Harwood, approximately 30 blocks from downtown and also 5 minutes from the main Johns Hopkins University Campus just to the west of here - was not my ideal location.  I had to take it because of time constraints.  First, I was living at a Motel 6 in October of last year and needed a house fast as my options were dwindling.  Second, I landed what was essentially my dream job, as a teacher at a very prominent Jesuit high school over in Fells Point (1.5 miles away) and needed to be closer to get the job.  The neighborhood we are in is not by any means the best - a couple of blocks south is an area known for drug trafficking, and the urban blight in this part of the city is like a foreign country almost.  The rowhouse we live in is also not my dream home - it is over 100 years old, and it really needs a lot of work, especially after a car slammed into the front of it a month ago.  Also, my job has its challenges too - I have had a well-earned three months of paid vacation, but frankly the previous school year was intense and I am a bit apprehensive at what I am going to have to deal with when the new school year begins a week from Monday.  However, on the positive, I have a good position overall, and it provides me with perhaps the highest salary I have ever earned, and financially I am in a good place.  And, as of late, no actual dreams about Baltimore itself as I am actually here now.  The pieces are falling into place - or the plan is coming together, if you will - for a new chapter here, and I am about to move into the next phase of the plan but have learned to let God guide my steps as I am at a point where one misstep could lead to catastrophe as things are still a bit fragile. However, there are ideas, and I want to briefly share them.

The Baltimore dreams I had were never about this inner-city area where I am sitting now - most of them entailed a suburban home somewhere but the settings of the area were inescapable; it was definitely Baltimore.  For the first time in my own life, I can start to contemplate home ownership, and am beginning to look into that.  Much like my cousins had astutely done, I am looking to get out of the city and move to a nicer area that is more conducive to my personal lifestyle, and it looks like I can start to make that happen.  At this point, I am in touch with both a realtor and a mortgage lender, and they are helping me to get the wheels turning to make things happen.  Getting into a nice place of my own like that would be the fulfillment of those dreams, and that is why as I look at the house listings the realtor gives me, I am looking for that house.  This also calls on God's taciturn direction as well, as I really want to do this right too.  I know this will not be an overnight process, but I think I can make it happen, so we will see what happens.

In conclusion, I believe that getting my own home here in a place that has haunted my dreams for years will be an example of the plan coming together, and things falling into place for me.  I know some reading this are facing similar situations.  You may be scared out of your wits and not have a clue as to what to do, and that is where you rely on God even more for the answer.  Your plans are not falling apart, but God is looking at them, tweaking them here and there a bit to line up with what he wills, and in no time your doors will open too.  So, be encouraged by that today, and I will keep you updated on how my plan is coming together, with all the pieces falling into place as they should.  Thank you until next time.