Being a comic book stories nerd, and a huge consumer of those movies, my silly mind got me wondering about the idea of a multiverse and various existences in which my life might look much different than it does in the real, present world. To make it less nerdy and more reasonable/respectable of a mental exercise 😋, what different versions of my life might there have been had I made different choices during what were potential major turning points in it? Or if life handed me a different play in certain circumstances?… 🤔 (I mean, the timing couldn’t be better – it’s been almost exactly 7 years since my divorce was finalized, I’m days away from 14 years at my current company (which is mind-blowing I gotta tell ya), and I’m fresh out of a 3-year relationship that I (maybe naively, but truly) thought would go the distance; so the notion of doing my own “What. If…” doesn’t seem too strange. 😋)
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[IF] I’d remained married to my ex-wife, I’d be rounding the bases on almost 16 years. My stepson would be about 31 years old 😅, and the wife and I might be in a place to relocate to a different city, to experience something new/different. But, might is a key word there bc that very discussion ended up being a small point of contention during our marriage anyways; or maybe more the timing of it, to be fair. I might not have my pup girl, bc we probably would’ve still had a hard time getting over the loss of our/her two kits… (RIP, little guys 😥)
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[IF] I’d never agreed to move back home from my stint in the Atlanta area, would I have remained there, potentially moved to a different major city further away, settled down there? How many more years would I have had to endure hearing Anita Baker as my apartment neighbor’s morning alarm music before lodging chopsticks into my ear canals?… 😂
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[IF] I’d landed the interview and secured the position fresh out of college at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, I might have been (or could possibly still be) living in the D.C. area, married perhaps, still working there, potentially concerned with job stability thanks to the ridiculous old Orange dude. No graduate school, no ex-wife, no relationship with many of the people I know right now…
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[IF] I’d accepted the fresh-in-the-door manager position at my current company, would I have burned out, become frustrated with the politics and bureaucracy enough to have splitsville? What would I be doing in its place? Would I have resumed the software development flow?…
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[IF] I’d declined the offer to give software development a shot while working as a general support tech for my first corporate gig, what options would that have left me? Would I have finally found a chem. engineering position somewhere (probably out of state)? What would be my career now/what would I have been doing the past 24 years?… 😮
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It’s kinda funny to ponder it all (and those are just a few!!), bc the probability of so many things being vastly different than they are now is most likely HUGE. But, I’m a firm believer that nothing is coincidental and everything happens for a reason and according to a divine plan – moreso, that our questionably-sound decisions lead us down paths that are still “flexible” enough that God can help realign our steps to get us on the general trajectory He intends for our lives, all the while deposits being made into our “experience savings accounts”, setting us up for wiser decisions going forward.
There are circumstances in my current life that I’d hoped would (and will) turn out differently, based on my own absence of knowledge about the future; but I always have to remember that God has put me on a pretty amazing road thus far, and one thing I do know about the future is that He’s nothing if not faithful.
#MyFaithBasedOnHisWorks ✝️