Plan B: God is not the pigs.

Growing up, I had this strange dual image of God. On the one hand, he is kind and grandfatherly, ready to hand me a dollar for a treat when I go to the store and patting me on the head encouragingly when I figure out how to ride my bike. On the other, he is the male and omnipotent version of Mrs. Connors, my frightening third grade math teacher, ridiculing me for my every mistake and ready to chuck an eraser at my head for every perceived misbehavior.

When I became a Christian in my early twenties, it was in a tiny little Southern Baptist church located in New York City. It was a beautiful group of hot messes, all of us dysfunctional and slightly strange. Although our dysfunction ultimately won out and the church disintegrated, I love those people to this day. Still, some of them had what I realize now were some pretty wrong ideas about how God works. They believed God has a “Plan B.”

They were very concerned with marriage, and that, in a tiny church community like that was, can get dangerous. There was a whole lot of “God told me you are to marry so-and-so.” Remembering it now, I chuckle a bit and think of Colossians 2:23 in The Message: Such things sound impressive if said in a deep enough voice. (Ha! Sarcasm! In the Bible!)

But it wasn’t funny back then, when I was a romantic, co-dependent young adult and new Christian, trying to make my way through all of this so-called theology. When the associate pastor ditched his God-ordained fiance at the last minute, despite everyone being so sure, this twenty-one year old romantic had some questions. Betsy, the beautiful, blonde Texas-born wife of our pastor, explained to me that God had Plan A. As humans, it was up to us to try to carry out his plan.

But what if my supposed-plan-A husband doesn’t feel like participating?

Well, then God moves on to plan B, Betsy explained.

So wait, because the idiot God wants me to marry isn’t with the plan, I get stuck with some Plan B loser? How is THAT fair? I wanted to know.

She didn’t really have an answer.

After the church fell apart, I floated along by myself for years. I feared doing anything wrong, because I shuddered at the potential consequences of my mistake. I’d hear teachings about sin and consequences: Well, God forgives our sin but we still have to deal with its mess. I was terrified that the consequences would be more than I could handle. Even more, I was terrified that God would flat out punish me. I didn’t want Plan B but I also didn’t know what to do to get God’s Plan A. So I decided to do the prodigal thing, and I just hid from God as best I could.

Which, when you think about it, is sort of like trying to run naked through a crowded street with only a cotton ball for cover and thinking you won’t be noticed.

The thing was, I had no understanding of radical grace.

I didn’t understand that God’s discipline is a tool of grace, not of punishment. His discipline, I’ve learned, is the way he leads us to those still waters, to the wide open spaces of freedom.

I have anxiety issues. How can I explain this? A fear — usually something completely made up in my head — roots itself into my heart, where it festers. It becomes an altar to the false god of whatever I’m afraid of, and I become guilty of idol worship. Somewhere, deep in the recesses of my soul, I believe that this thing I am afraid of is bigger and better than my God, Creator of the universe.

For example, money matters can induce fear in me like none other. It doesn’t really make sense, because my husband and I, thank God, are doing fine. We’re not rich, but we carry no debt, can pay our bills each month, and have a soft — if small — cushion to land on should we need to.

But the thought of talking to my husband about money? Like, actually having a conversation?

You’d think I was being brought to the electric chair after swimming. You’d think I was headed for the gallows. Or worse, you’d think I was headed back to Mrs. Connor’s math class.

My head swims. My heart beats faster. My gut clenches and I start sweating, my breath shallow in my chest.

Which brings me to God’s discipline. Recently, I had a days-long panic attack over money. I was terrified to talk to my husband about the perceived danger — our savings account had dipped a little lower than we would have liked.

Not, mind you, that creditors were beating down our door. Or that we were going to lose our home. Or that we were broke.

No. Just that our savings account had dipped a little bit.

And it’s not that my husband is a horrible ogre of whom I have reason to be afraid. He actually takes financial dips and swings in greater stride than I.

It’s just that inside my head, there was a demon telling me lies.

I call her Lois.

And Lois got me to worship money, to head down the prodigal path away from the all-powerful Almighty and to a jail cell of anxiety and fear. Let me list my sins: there was the pride I adhered to, because I was afraid my husband would find something I did wrong and get mad at me. There was the disbelief in God that I can be a good money manager, and that we would be more than okay financially. There was the worship of money in the power I gave it over my emotional well-being and spiritual life.

The dirty, abominable practice of idol worship. I had given money so much power in my emotional life, it was creating a dead place in my psyche. I call her Lois, but in truth I had built an altar to my own personal Baal and his real name was Dollar Bill. He tormented me at every turn. This altar was a place of death, of ugly sin, a place where the sludge of money-worship spilled over the edges of my heart, into my every-day reality.

But the truth is if I am poor, God is still God. And if I am rich, God is still God. If I am in debt or flush with cash, God will always be God. And he will always be my God — my savior, my hero. My bank account does not determine how much God loves me. Jesus did not die and rise again for everyone except bad money managers.

And I was stubborn — I held onto the sins of my pride and false gods. I began a slow decline into a days-long panic attack. High anxiety like this is difficult to explain, but the best I can do is to say it is like the feeling of being afraid of heights and standing on the cliff, or afraid of public speaking and you’re just about to go on stage. The knot in your stomach, the tightness in your chest, the sweaty palms. It was like that for me — for days.  It was the sludge of pigs that the prodigal fed upon in his search for something other than the house of his father.

And a funny thing happened when I went to the Bible for comfort. Instead of comforting words, instead of coming across one of the many Fear Nots, I found discipline. Straight up. Cut to the chase. Sin called out for the death star of the heart that it is. A giant, orb-shaped death star right in the middle of our hearts, filled with sludge.

I thought about this sludge for a long time while I was caught up in the throes of this panic attack. I thought about the prodigal and his pigs. I thought about how much I have feared God’s wrath in such a time as this.

I thought, Crap, am I smack in the middle of Plan B?

Then I had a realization.

I realized that in the prodigal story, God is not the pigs.

God is the father, ready to welcome us back, wrap us in a bear hug before we even take a bath. I’m not even that good of a mom. Seriously — my kids comes at me covered in ice cream and I’m like Whoa hold up there little buddy. Go wash off before you pounce. But not God. God is not the pigs, but he’s willing to hang out with me just the same, even when I’m covered in pig slime.

I know it’s obvious that God was always the father in the prodigal story. But I had often blamed him for being the pigs, too.

God used the pigs, and he used that ass Lois to discipline me. Because he disciplines those whom he loves.

And when I finally surrendered all my pride and idol worship to him, when I was broken and crying in a big anxious heap at my desk, I wrote my husband a letter (I know — I’m a dweeb), telling him all about the horror of having a little less in the bank account than we had before; I told him I needed help because I felt ill-equipped to handle the finances by myself. I asked him could we please use budget software I had found, and could we please meet monthly to talk about money so I could not feel so alone.

And he came up after reading the letter and gave me a bear hug, and laughed at me a little bit because I am a psycho, (by that time, I was laughing too) and immediately, I was in the father’s arms, cleansed and freed from the junk of the pigs.

Now, I walk in wide open spaces of communication with my husband about all things financial; about owning my money rather than it owning me. It’s a freeing, lovely place to be, and I understand how radical the grace of God actually is.

And I realized something else: in God’s world, there’s no such thing as Plan B. Because if we let him, God can take any plan, and make it an A.