How many if us have resorted to some sort of Plan B, C, or D in our lives when we take wrong turns, make bad choices or when things just don’t work out as we had planned or hoped?

That would be all of us. Then echoes the statement: “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.”

And as you know, there are some things you just can’t anticipate, plan and prepare for. But for the grace of God we go through life. My hope for us all is no matter how we started, or how messy things have been, we will finish well as much as is up to each of us.

Last night I witnessed a young couple in the midst of resorting to Plan B in their lives. I was in a store with my children visiting my wife who works there part time to help us get by during this wet, wintry season of our lives. In this real life scene we find my wife behind a counter at the cash register while I’m leaning up against an adjacent counter.

The way out and my kids are in between as a couple walked past us setting of the security censors. My wife was helping another customer and asked the couple to step back inside to figure out what set off the censor. The couple then disappeared into the back of the store and returned a short time later with a receipt in hand.

My wife asked to open her leather bag and the young woman motioned that she preferred it opened tilted away from other eyes. My wife zipped open the bag, paused at the contents and had the young woman walk through the censor, followed by the red faced young man. This time the product in question did not set off the alarm.

My wife free again, my children rushed the counter to steal time with the mother they so love and who so loves them so. She’s given so much for them, for me, and her family... And then she told what was in the bag, “It was Plan B.”

“Why didn’t you say something?” I responded in haste, “That was a human life?” And no coincidence it had set off an alarm right there between my wife, my children and I. Why hadn’t my wife told me sooner. I went out the door but the couple were nowhere in site.

“Why didn’t you say something? I asked my wife? She didn’t know what to say. All we could do was pray.

“What’s Plan B?’ My daughter asked my wife. My wife didn’t know what to say as her boss approached to ask about an employee who’d been missing for over an hour from a fifteen-minute break.

“I’ll tell you later.” I said to my daughter.

“What’s Plan B?” she asked again.

“I’ll tell you after we leave, ” I said, and then my children joined my wife on her break and I went to watch Joannie Rochette win an Olympic Bronze medal under the weight of having lost her mother to a heart attack within the same week. The whole world cheered her on!

Why is some life and relationships deemed to be valuable beyond measure and other life considered inconvenient and disposable? And my mind goes back to the couple making a poor choice to have sex outside of a committed relationship where there is enough love, and maturity to care for a child. Everyone knows, other precious human lives can show up on the scene as a beautiful part of the package when you engage in the wonderful creative gift of sex…

And having made one poor choice it’s harder to do the right thing, easier to take another selfish Plan B way out at the expense of others and one’s conscience and peace of mind. Let’s listen to the alarms going off in our lives and take courage to do the right thing; there’s no easy way out…