Let it be

Even the smallest decisions we make in life can have bigger impacts than we thought they would.

And sometimes they change others' lives, as well.

About a year ago, I was in my second-to-last semester of grad school and taking classes a couple of nights a week. At the end of the semester, one of my classes got out super early on our very last meeting. There was a guy in that class who had talked Rangers and football with me a lot each week, and he asked me if I wanted to go hang out that night. Then he added that he wanted to get to know me better, because he thought we had a lot in common and were placed in the same class by Cupid's fate.

Umm, no.

I declined. He seemed nice enough, but I wasn't interested in him, and I figured it was silly to waste either of our time. There was nothing Cupid-related between us. At all.

This picture has very little relevance.

I didn't see him after that, and I can't say I was disappointed when we didn't have any classes together in my final semester in the spring. I honestly never even thought of that situation anymore until the other day when I received an email from the guy. He was basically thanking me for turning him down, because that night he went to meet his friends at a bar, instead, and he ended up meeting the girl of his dreams there, as well. He just recently proposed, and they are getting married in the spring. He dropped some truth in his little note: "If I had been hanging out with you, I might not have met the most amazing woman ever to walk the earth."

You're welcome?

It made me start to think about a lot of decisions I've made—whether big or small—and how things might be different right now if I had gone other directions. Where would I be if I had just stayed at A&M all four years of college? What would have happened if I had continued my career in sports reporting? How different would running and group of friends be if I had never started running with some of those crazies in Dallas? Why did I choose the blueberry bagel over the cinnamon sugar last Friday?

Some of life's mysteries we will never know.

And then I had to stop thinking about these things, because I know they all happened for some special purpose. It's silly to sit there and ponder how my life would be different, because it's never going to be that way. It is the way it is for a reason, because that's how God intended it to be. I didn't hang out with Cupid-loving-grad-class guy, because I was not supposed to, and he was clearly meant to end up with someone else.

Life is full of decisions. Some of them seem monumental; some of them seem itsy-bitsy. Yet, all of them impact our lives—and sometimes those of others—more than we'll ever know. Sure, we might not always like our decisions, and we could often regret many of them, but they all led us to where we are. We wouldn't be the people we are without the choices we make on a daily basis.

So, instead of harping on choices you've made in the past, just embrace the notion that you're being molded into the person you're supposed to be.