I never used to believe in the idea that everything in my life happened for a reason. I would get angry when things didn’t go my way. I would blame other people for the things that didn’t go exactly the way I had planned them.
I was always bitter whenever I happened to get the short straw. The world was beating me at the game of life and I wasn’t allowed to stop playing.
I don’t think that there was one moment where I can point to on the timeline of my life and say definitively that there was the moment where I figured out that things happen for reasons that are out of my control.
It wasn’t a sudden change, either. It was a gradual progression towards realizing that things, especially ones that didn’t go my way, were for a greater purpose than even I could only hope to grasp.
In Luke 8:17, Jesus says, "For nothing is hidden that will not become evident, nor anything secret that will not be known and come to light.” This is my favorite verse in the entire Bible. It gives me the strength to push forward through the tough times because I know that God has a plan for me and one day it will all be made clear.
I may not understand it now, but everything that happens to me, good or bad, is happening to me for a purpose. Whether it’s making me a better man now so I can be a better friend, or whether it’s for 15 years down the road so that I’ll be a better husband and father, I know that every single moment in my life, every single day, is preparing me to become the man that I was meant to be.
God works in mysterious ways, in ways that I don’t understand most of the time, but I know that when I meet Him, He’ll show me how everything I did made me who I am.
In no way do I consider myself a perfect person or see myself as someone who has everything figured out. I’m walking through life just about as blindly as one person can. But one thing I can hang my hat on is that every choice that I make, for better or for worse, is shaping me for the future.
I’ve got my family, my friends and God helping me throughout life and with them on my side, I can’t possibly lose.
I know that when I’m ready to leave this world, I’m going to look back on all my experiences and how they made me who I am and I’ll smile, knowing then that everything truly does happen for a reason.
