This Wasn’t the Plan: Learning to Trust God in Seasons We Don’t Choose

“I think He just wanted to teach me that I wasn't in control. I was never in control. He was always in control of every situation.”

Feb 18, 2026

What do you do when life doesn’t go according to plan?

Join me for this conversation with author, podcaster, and longtime caregiver Ruthie Gray to talk about faith, calling, and God’s sustaining grace in the “sandwich season” of life—those years when you’re caring for aging parents while still raising children.

Ruthie shares her powerful story of stepping into caregiving at age 45, walking through 15 years of medical crises, transitions, and responsibilities that stretched her far beyond what she thought she could handle.

Together, we talk about:

Holding your plans loosely and trusting God day by day
Finding “joy gems” in the middle of chaos
Caring for yourself without guilt while caring for others
Discovering purpose and calling in seasons you didn’t choose
Leaning into Scripture, gratitude, and praise when life feels overwhelming

Below is a snippet of our conversation. If you prefer listening, you can listen to/watch the full conversation on Apple, Spotify or YouTube.

Tell us your story.

So my dad was a pastor. He and mom went to a Bible college about 10 minutes down the road from me in Southern West Virginia. And they led me to the Lord at age four. And I went to a Christian school.

And yet I didn’t really start my journey with God for serious until I was challenged by one of my teachers at the school in seventh grade, and he came in so charged up about the Lord.

And this man is one of my spiritual mentors. He’s still alive. He’s 97 now, I believe, and he was a former alcoholic. He was in the service and he was a hardened atheist. And he just made the Scriptures open up and he said, start with John.

And so even though I had been raised in a godly home for so many years, I thought, okay, this sounds exciting. I’m going to try it. And that’s when I really started having a Scripture prayer experience on my own. I took on that challenge.

And so after that, I was really serious about my walk with the Lord ever since. Have there been times when I have strayed? Yes. Have there been times when I’ve been rebellious? Yes. And the Lord sometimes gave me just enough rope to bring myself back.

And so, thankfully, when the caregiving season started, I was 100% walking with the Lord and I was so thankful that I’d had that background to fall back on because I really needed it.

How have you seen God in your season of caregiving?

Well, when it started, I still had all four kids at home, even though the older two were commuting to college. The younger two, I was homeschooling high school. And I almost lost my mind.

Well, that was my question, God, how is this going to happen? It was the first day of the second semester that we were starting, so it was January. And so you have to know this too, my husband has had a lot of serious health issues. To look at him, he looks great. He looks like he’s healthy and everything, but he’s had a lot.

And the day before my mom’s stroke, I had followed my husband in an ambulance. He’d been taken by ambulance to a hospital about an hour away for a specialist. And so I had spent the night there and came home and I was packing to go back and my dad called me and he said, Ruthie, I think your mom has had a stroke.

Now we had built our home on land that mom and dad gave us. So we were adjacent to them. We were right next door. Thankfully, this all played out well in the end.

So my husband said, you’re going to have to go take care of that situation. Don’t worry about me, I’ll be in testing today anyway. So I went and mom was in denial and I had to go ahead and call an ambulance and we took care of that situation.

But in the ensuing months, everything else that happened, you asked me, how did I see God working? Well, He went behind and before me. And as I was running up and down my stairs, that first day after I got that call, I was weeping because my daughters were standing there in the hallway watching me run around like a chicken with my head cut off.

And I was like, how can I do this, God? How can I serve these two little girls that are 14 and 16 and give them a good education, get them ready for college, and serve my parents. And as time went on, I realized that it was gonna have to be a day at a time thing. I couldn’t look at the future, I couldn’t look at everything, even though I did need to try and make plans. I just realized it was going to have to be a day at a time.

But before I really got to that realization, I was trying to get them healed so I could get back to my life. But when catastrophe after catastrophe kept happening, I remember specifically being in the hospital one day and I was just so frustrated and I needed answers and doctors weren’t answering me soon enough. Tests weren’t coming back in. I felt like one issue uncovered another one.

And that was when I began really hearing from the Lord. And He said, Ruthie, this is the plan now. And I thought, wow, okay, God, if this is the plan, and I don’t like hearing that, but if this is the plan, then you have to show me how and I will. And so we did.

What’s the biggest lesson the Lord has taught you through this unexpected season?

You must hold your plans loosely. I’m a planner. And so this did not fit into my plan. I had stepped out in faith to homeschool my girls in eighth and 10th grade, which I had previously had them in a Christian school.

And so I was trying to understand why God would let that happen. I’d always prayed over those decisions. And I had homeschooled them before when they were younger. And so this was a big decision. It wasn’t taken lightly. So why was He allowing me all of this responsibility?

And I think He just wanted to teach me that I wasn’t in control. I was never in control. He was always in control of every situation, even when my kids were home, even though I thought I was in control. He was just readying me for adult parenting is what He was doing, cause that’s a whole other lesson.

But, you know, He just taught me that some days, you just have to take it a day at a time and there’s enough grace for every single day.

What words of encouragement would you give to someone who finds themselves in a similar season?

Hold your plans loosely. Remember that not everything is terrible at the same time. Develop a practice of gratitude and just really leaning into the Lord, whatever that looks like in your season.

Thankfully, I had cultivated quiet time with the Lord in the mornings. That was a biggie for me. But one of the things that really grew my faith and helped me get through this season was starting to read the Bible through.

I had gone to Bible college. I went to the same Bible college down the road that my parents did. That meant that I graduated with a BA in Bible and music. I’m a pianist.

But I had read through the Bible because I got tested on all of the books of the Bible, but that was speed reading, you know? And I had never really read through the entire Bible successfully as really soaking it in.

So I thought, you know what? I think I can do this. And it was like the second year of my caregiving. And I said, I want to really try this. Well, once I tried it, I just got hooked. And I couldn’t stop. It was like year after year. Am I going to do this again? Yeah, definitely.

And I found that once you look at Scripture as a whole, like we’re reading in Genesis and then we’re reading in Psalms and then we’re reading a Proverbs and then we’re reading in Matthew. You’re doing that like once a day and it all starts to come together.

And you’re like, this all makes sense. God has been planning this all along, this whole journey. And what really encourages me is in the Old Testament, He says, ‘Remember the story. Remember the story of when I saved you from Egypt.’ And so I’m still doing it. And that was, I don’t know, 12 years ago, I think that I started that.

And so God has taught me to really lean into Him and that every single time that I read through the Scriptures, I find something new. It’s always new. It’s always fresh because we’re always in a different season of life.

But then there were those days where there was a three month period where I was either in a hospital, an emergency room, a rehab facility, like physical therapy or a doctor’s office for three months every single weekday between mom and dad.

And then there was just all the follow-up appointments and everything else that happened and all the other emergencies. And I just had to pick and choose. What was I going to do that day?

There was a time when the grandkids started coming along and we had to babysit them, too, because their mom was working. So I babysat them two and three times a week. I just sat down and started writing verses, memorizing them in the car on the way to pick those kids up.

So it looks different in every season, but if you can realize that it doesn’t have to look the same, as long as you’re realizing that God is right there. He’s right there. He’s closer than your breath. Just acknowledge Him and have a conversation with Him in a relationship.

The more that I lean into God’s truths in His word, the more grateful I am that He sought to save me. And I really started, about 10 years ago, focusing on praise. And then, gradually I got better and better at it because it wasn’t natural for me.

I just didn’t understand the concept but Scripture says that God loves to dwell in the praises of his people. And praise doesn’t just lift up Him, but it changes our perspective so much.

And Judy Doonigan wrote a book called The Loudest Roar. And in it, she gives ways to praise. And one of her ways is to go through the alphabet. And I heard her talk about this at the Speak Up Conference in Grand Rapids that I attend every year for writers and speakers.

And ever since then, I’ve been doing this. Just go through the alphabet: Almighty God, Bread of Life, Creator, Defender, Fortress, and it doesn’t take long, but instead of breezing through every morning, I’m thinking about each word, and I’ve started making a collection of names of God from Scriptures that correspond to the letter of the alphabet.

And it centers me. And it helps me know He’s in control. It’s all His plan. And I’m just a vessel. I’m His servant.

Listen to or watch the full conversation on Apple, Spotify or YouTube.

Thank you for being here,

Katharine

P.S. Eternal Echoes is free today. But if you’d like to partner with me in passing on faith and wisdom to future generations, I’d be so grateful if you consider supporting my work. I thank you truly, kindly and sincerely.

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