Second Chances

“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.

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