“I think about the years I spent just passing through
I’d like to have the time I lost and give it back to you
But you just smile and take my hand
You’ve been there you understand
It’s all part of a grander plan that is coming true.”
—“God bless the broken road,” Carrie Underwood
Whenever I hear this song, I think it’s not that God had some grand plan that includes our screwups. It’s just that God is all about second chances.
I entered college an insecure, socially inept and hopelessly naïve farm girl. In the fall of my freshman year, the internet was just taking off. In those pre-Web days, it was all about “IRC”—internet relay chat. Anybody remember that? (Apparently it’s still around.) My friends and I used to go down to the computer lab and have conversations with people across our campus of 30,000 and across the globe.
I was too busy to spend much time on IRC, so when I did join the chat, my friends gave me lots of pointers. “Watch out for that ‘Prof’ guy,” they told me. “He’s some psycho grad student that lives over across campus.”
Well, the Prof tried to talk to me one night, asking questions, trying to get to know me. Mindful of my friends’ warnings, I sidestepped him and logged off. Odd, how you remember these things.
Two weeks later, I got together with my first love, an atheist/agnostic saxophone player who became my entire world. When you’re socially inept and naïve and completely inexperienced in real life romance, you can go a long time without recognizing something that is patently bad for you. Two years and some change later, it ended; enough said. When I returned to school in the fall of 2005, I had learned many things, not least of which was a whole new appreciation for the faith of my childhood, and for my mother’s admonition to “date Catholic boys.” At peace with my newfound insights into love and life, I joined the choir at Newman. And there, sitting behind the piano, was this Italian guy with the best laugh in the world.
Sometime that winter, Christian and I were walking down University Avenue and reminiscing about IRC. “What was your handle?” he asked.
“Ckat,” I said. “What about you?”
“Prof,” he said. And my jaw hit the ground. Suddenly, I wondered if it was pointless—the pain and fear of commitment we were both suffering because of our failed relationships. All that emotional baggage seemed to loom overhead, and the thought socked me in the stomach: what if God didn’t intend for us to go through all that? What if all that pain was completely unnecessary? What if we were supposed to find each other as freshman and sophomore, and never be with anybody else?
I am eternally grateful for second chances.
Kathleen M. Basi 
Wow… I didn’t know Christian IRC’ed! Was I involved in the “don’t talk to Prof” advice? I somehow don’t even remember that handle. There was a strange philosophy grad student that we had talked to and even met that I can totally understand wanting to avoid.
It’s a good thing God is patient with us! 🙂
That’s funny!
And by the way, you were not in school in fall of 2005.
What a great story! I don’t know… I choose to believe that God did intend for you to have that other relationship. If you don’t feel like you know why, then I think you’ll find out when you get to meet Him. Maybe it had something to do with timing or with Christian. Even though we have free will and the opportunity to screw things up, I still think God makes such great plans for us that he takes that into account.
Thanks, Kelley…1995, the year I met Christian, and 2005, the year my firs tchild was born, get hopelessly mixed up in my brain! 😉
Niki–I don’t remember who said it. No worries, it is what it is, we are where we are (fill in the platitude 🙂 )
Amy–You know, the more I think @ it, I do think that God gives us second chances when we screw up the first ones. He–and we–can take what we learned from our screwups, and use it to make our futures better, to make ourselves better people–but everything I learned from my failed relationship is so far off the radar now; it’s not a formative part of my psyce anymore. What I learned (and learn) from Christian is who I am now. So I do think that it’s possible that we were Supposed to skip all the pain of the first round…that that was God’s plan…but since we didn’t manage to do it, he gave us another chance.
I like the logic here…it is like God is a good parent readjusting things according to how people are and what they do. Flexible yet unyielding, both/and…yep, that is the God I know 🙂
I love this. God is a God of second chances for sure. I read somewhere that God will keep offering us what He wills for us over and over. He will even bend the road to meet us! Like writing straight with crooked lines! God bless!
Loved this post. I loved your take on it. When I reflect on how I met my husband, I wonder if I would have met him had I not had another poorly chosen relationship first. I remember professing once that I would NEVER live in Jefferson City, yet that’s where God plunked me down in the fall of 1999. Here we are, ten years later…