"There is this advantage in the dark. You do not see how
dangerous the way is. We take the darkness about us for the source of our difficulties . It is a great mistake. Christian would hardly have dared go through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, had he not had the shield of the darkness all about him."

" Can the darkness be a shield? Is it not the evil thing?"

" Yes, the dark that is within us ---the dark of distrust and unwillingness, but not the outside dark of mere human ignorance. Where we do not see, we are protected. Where we are most ignorant and most in danger is in those things that affect the life of God in us . There the Father is every moment watching his child. If he were not constantly pardoning and punishing our sins, what would become of us? We must learn to trust him about our faults as much as about everything else!"

Donal Grant, George MacDonald

Almost everytime I'm with a new group of friends, someone brings up this question to break the ice: "So, do you think there's only one person for you, or do you think there's a lot of people you could be happy with?"

And every time they ask that question, I answer, "I think there's a lot of people I could potentially marry and live happily-ever-after with, but God only leads me to one of them (two if the first guy dies on me, and then I remarry)...or maybe He just orchestrates it so I don't meet any of the 10 guys I could potentially be with, so instead, I become a bird lady."

"Neurotic," the other party says, to which I reply -

"Sap."

My mom, ever the romantic even after more than two decades of marriage, begged to differ. "I know that God has a really good guy in mind for you," she says whenever I visit home, still unquestionably single. She's even given him a name - Boaz - after Ruth's husband.

Now that I'm one year away from graduating, I wonder a lot about what God has in store for my future, and whether He has only one future planned or several alternatives. Is there really only ONE job where I could flourish, ONE guy I can marry, ONE place I can settle down in, ONE church I can attend?

I worry about misreading God's plan so much that I sometimes forget to just live. Take grad school for example - does God want me to go, or does He want me to pursue a career for the time being? What if I chose the "wrong" option, God's plan got derailed (can humans even do that?), and He had to do serious damage control? Does God have a plan B just in case I pick the "wrong" thing?

Think of it this way - with the premise that you're single and that "one and only" soulmates do in fact, exist - that yours lives in Venezuela while you live in Ohio. Say God called you to be a missionary in Venezuela, but you chose the fab life as a publisher in New York instead. Would you just never have met and married the soulmate in Venezuela (God says: "Too bad, you didn't follow my call so WELCOME TO SINGLEHOOD....FOREVER) or does God have someone else lined up for you in New York? And then think about Venezuelan guy/girl. Say you DO become a missionary and that person moves to Denmark. Then what?

I just wonder if God's plan is contingent on our decisions - humans are so prone to stubborness and making mistakes that I don't know how God can even plan stuff for us.

It's a little early for me to be thinking about marriage or kids, but I sometimes wonder if I'm destined for a second-rate existence just because I turned that one guy down...

Do you think God has only ONE calling for you? Do you every worry that your mistakes may actually derail God's plan?