Going Sideways: The Future is Accidental

When I say the future is accidental what I mean is that even though your life personally may be intentional in what you study and in what you plan to do, the future mostly follows the basic rule of:   "Life is what happens while you are making other plans."

For example, you live in Europe and planned your whole life to see all the National Parks of the U.S. Your one trip to the U.S. finally is coming about today. Nope. Isn't going to happen because of the Government Shut down.

Life is a lot like this where you cannot predict how things are going to go generally.  For example, during the 1950s and 1960s we believed we all would be flying helicopters to work. Instead we got home computers, the Internet and 3d Printing instead of everyone flying helicopters to work. This means a whole lot less people died from crashing their helicopters into each other. (Thank God). And a lot of people like me were really disappointed in the future as a result because we wanted to fly those helicopters.

But, at least I didn't die or get maimed in the Viet Nam War. Instead because I had had childhood epilepsy that I almost died from I got a 4F from the draft board so I wouldn't be called unless the nation's homeland (mainland) was attacked. But then I broke up with my girlfriend that I intended to marry because she didn't want to have children and I wanted to have children. So, to make a long story short I was ostracized from my childhood religion because of this break up and becoming to 1960s for everyone (too progressive in a repressive church). So, I became suicidal for a few years while everyone else I knew this happened to actually killed themselves as a result of this sort of thing.

So, I went back to college and studied to become a psychologist but my girlfriend got pregnant instead so I got married and by 29 I was a single parent with a 3 year old son who will be 40 years old next year. Now I have 3 biological children, 2 stepchildren, and two God daughters. And have been married 3 times now since 1974 with at least one child under 17 years of age since then that I have been raising ever since. The only years I wasn't married were 1978 and 1979 since 1974.

So, did I intend any of this? I intended to be married and to be a father and wanted to be a computer programmer (which I did) and then a psychologist (which I studied to be) until my son was born.

So, you tell me. Is the future accidental or not?

So, what does this mean?

It means that unless you are an opportunist you likely will not survive very well or do very well in this life. Being an opportunist means that you are always looking for opportunities of all kinds all the time and taking advantage of them. God moves in mysterious ways. And God helps those who help themselves. Thank You God!

You might think you know your future but you don't.

Even if you are someone like me who knows about 10% of the time what is going to happen next.

However, I am incredibly grateful to God for this ability because both I and a whole bunch of people I know and have met would either be dead now or maimed if he hadn't given me this ability to use to help and save people. Thanks God for  using me to save  people.