Not a question of "what if"...

I've had this song stuck in my head all day, plus i've sung to tons of people too...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5_y0s-COl8

But anyways...the other day when playing some basketball at the apartment again, i was musing with a friend of mine about when i came home from the mission about 2 1/2 years ago and plans i had in mind at that time. I thought back to the time that i had so much that i was "going to" accomplish when i got home. They were:

-Marrying the girl i was writing the whole time and then...
-get a job ASAP so i could...
-Go to BYU-Idaho in Spring 2010

Sounds fine with a young, naive RM back in 2009, right? I sure thought so. How the plans really worked out:

-Got let go by the girl i was writing the very next day being home on Facebook, and then...
-took 9 months to get a job, by then i couldn't...
-Go to BYU-Idaho in Spring 2010, but had to wait til Fall 2010, in total waiting 15 months to come here.

In 2012, i've accepted these changes a looooong time ago, so this is not a blog about how i wish they had worked out. Don't get confused. But this did give me some kind of idea like this: where would have my life been had it gone that way, instead of where it is now?

When i pass away some day and have my lovely wife and children and all my earthly experiences with me as i approach the awaiting glories of eternity, i'll be pretty happy where my life took me to that point. All my experiences would have made me the person that i am with no regrets. I hope to not be like the quote i heard from a mission companion once: "Hell is the person you are meeting the person you could've become."

But when i think about it, what if the other choices has happened instead of the things that are meant to happen? Where would my life be? Where would it have gone differently? Would i have a different career choice? And so on...

If i did get married to her, i might not have come to BYU-I. If i got accepted to school in spring instead of fall, then i wouldnt have been able to have the roommates i had and the friends i made that fall semester. A job really early might have stunted the spiritual growth i needed by attending institute all that time. This whole thing reminds me of a talk looooooonnnnngggg ago by Hugh B. Brown, who was an apostle in the Church many years ago. He gave a talk called, "The Currant Bush" regarding changes...

"You sometimes wonder whether the Lord really knows what he ought to do with you. You sometimes wonder if you know better than he does about what you ought to do and ought to become. I am wondering if I may tell you a story that I have told quite often in the Church. It is a story that is older than you are. It’s a piece out of my own life, and I’ve told it in many stakes and missions. It has to do with an incident in my life when God showed me that he knew best.
I was living up in Canada. I had purchased a farm. It was run-down. I went out one morning and saw a currant bush. It had grown up over six feet high. It was going all to wood. There were no blossoms and no currants. I was raised on a fruit farm in Salt Lake before we went to Canada, and I knew what ought to happen to that currant bush. So I got some pruning shears and went after it, and I cut it down, and pruned it, and clipped it back until there was nothing left but a little clump of stumps. It was just coming daylight, and I thought I saw on top of each of these little stumps what appeared to be a tear, and I thought the currant bush was crying. I was kind of simpleminded (and I haven’t entirely gotten over it), and I looked at it, and smiled, and said, “What are you crying about?” You know, I thought I heard that currant bush talk. And I thought I heard it say this: “How could you do this to me? I was making such wonderful growth. I was almost as big as the shade tree and the fruit tree that are inside the fence, and now you have cut me down. Every plant in the garden will look down on me, because I didn’t make what I should have made. How could you do this to me? I thought you were the gardener here.” That’s what I thought I heard the currant bush say, and I thought it so much that I answered. I said, “Look, little currant bush, I am the gardener here, and I know what I want you to be. I didn’t intend you to be a fruit tree or a shade tree. I want you to be a currant bush, and some day, little currant bush, when you are laden with fruit, you are going to say, ‘Thank you, Mr. Gardener, for loving me enough to cut me down, for caring enough about me to hurt me. Thank you, Mr. Gardener.’ ”

...After having an experience where he was turned down for a huge promotion in the military for his religion, he felt that he should have had it; a "how could you do this to me, God?" moment. After coming to his senses, he concludes...

And then I heard a voice, and I recognized the tone of this voice. It was my own voice, and the voice said, “I am the gardener here. I know what I want you to do.” The bitterness went out of my soul, and I fell on my knees by the cot to ask forgiveness for my ungratefulness and my bitterness. While kneeling there I heard a song being sung in an adjoining tent. A number of Mormon boys met regularly every Tuesday night. I usually met with them. We would sit on the floor and have a Mutual Improvement Association. As I was kneeling there, praying for forgiveness, I heard their voices singing:
“It may not be on the mountain height
Or over the stormy sea;
It may not be at the battle’s front
My Lord will have need of me;
But if, by a still, small voice he calls
To paths that I do not know,
I’ll answer, dear Lord, with my hand in thine:
I’ll go where you want me to go.”     (Hugh B. Brown, "The Currant Bush")


Makes sense now.