We had a plan.

I was going to go to the hospital to give birth and return home without a baby, as this little one inside me would be going home with his parents. And that would probably be just fine. But on the odd chance it wasn’t ok, if my body held on to this biological urge to care for a little being that was no longer around, what then?

A kitten, I thought. That would solve it. Small and soft and snuggly and in need of care. Something to hold in my arms if ever they felt too empty. Something much littler than my squirmy four-year-old or her three older siblings.

It was the plan.

And I’d intended to wait to bring my own little bundle home after delivering this one to his home. If they had to wait, I figured, so should I.

But then we met Smokey. A tiny, terrified ball of fur living under a well-worn farm porch. And that little girl of ours spent days working hard with her Gram to make him comfortable with human hands, to be held in human arms. And she was in love. And we had a plan to get a kitten anyway, so why not this one?

We scrounged up a carrier and he came home.

And I cried as I thought about taking him away from his own mother – the only home he’d known – regardless of how much healthier and safer he’d be in our house, would he be happier, really?

Before long, though, he was ours and we were his. He was patient with the curious hands of a pre-schooler a little too in love with cats. He played with my husband, who tried to claim he never wanted me to bring the little guy home in the first place, but whose constant attention gave away his true affections. He snuggled in tiny laps and curled up against my growing belly. Throughout this entire pregnancy he has made himself at home and I have trusted he would be ready to be exactly what he was meant for – a comfort in my coming time of need.

But what about when the plan falls apart?

What about when I’m three weeks away from that pending due date and the vet calls in the middle of surgery to extricate a stray string caught in his insides to report, “It’s much worse than we thought – do you want us to continue?” And the only option is to say, “Yes, please,” while thinking, “I need him. I need him home with me. We all do.” And then when the call comes hours later to report he was gone . . . Really gone.

And the plan was gone.

My comfort had turned to pain.

So much pain.

You don’t realize how much this little fur-baby has crawled into your heart until you think you see him curled up on the carpet only to realize it’s just a pair of slippers. Or you walk to the kitchen expecting him to run to meet you – and you’re met with an empty room. Or you see his food and think it’s time to give him the medicine he’s needed lately and it occurs to you he’s not waiting for it.

And then you think about him curled up with your little ones and how much they’ll miss that and how much you’ll miss seeing it, or seeing those tough hands of the man you love gently holding soft gray fur.

And you realize he took a piece of your heart with him.

And now the baby inside will be going home (and we’re so happy for that – it’s the only place he bleongs) and we’ll be going home and these arms will remain empty. And grief will roll over again.

It’s not the way we planned it.

But as we’ve learned many times along this journey with its unexpected twists and turns, our plans are not His plans.

And I was never meant to find comfort in little bundles of fur or the warm flesh of a tiny human. Our comfort and hope has always been meant to be found in Him. And I can trust, even more than I could when I was counting on a that planned-for kitten, that this comfort from my Heavenly Father will always fill the need in a way nothing else ever could or was ever created to do. I may not have something tiny to curl up in my arms, but I know in Whose arms I can find myself.

“I can do all things
Through Christ who gives me strength
And I don’t have to be
Strong enough” – Matthew West, Strong Enough