No, it’s not anything that dramatic. Recently I celebrated my 18th year since first setting foot in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. It wasn’t a big party, just an evening together over ice cream.
My fellow missionaries, who also happen to be my in laws, wanted to know the story of how I got here in the first place. I thought about it…
It seemed like a good opportunity in place of an otherwise boring weekend. An airline donated tickets to Port Harcourt and back to Lagos, where I was volunteering at the time.
But even my being in Lagos was because of an invitation from missionaries there, who I met in South Africa at a gathering of missionaries from the SADC region.
I was only in South Africa for a few days en route to Botswana and I was only in Botswana because of a few small decisions that I made randomly.
Those decisions were made randomly because of an article that was forwarded to me accidentally.
The friend that forwarded me the article was met through a mutual friend who I had not seen in 14 years and our paths had coincidentally crossed again at some local festival in a city where neither of us had ever lived or visited before.
And on and on it goes…
It just made me realize (again) that no matter what we plan for our own future and how hard we work towards personal goals, sometimes we end up some place that we never anticipated, or find ourselves doing far different things than we planned for.
As someone wisely said, ‘Man proposes, but God disposes.’ I still believe in planning ahead and making long-term goals, but will leave the realization of it all in the Lord’s hands.