Do you ever notice how sometimes you are in just the right place at the right time to experience something wonderful, and just at the moment you realize how lucky you are to see what you've seen, or do what you've done, or felt what you've felt, you know suddenly that it wasn't luck at all? You look back, and you see how much of the path you've taken so far has led you to this one moment--this one blip on the radar of eternity--and no matter where you go after this, it has to be better and brighter because of this small minute that's been given to you.

I feel that ever since I came to BYU, and the vastness of my future unfurled itself unnervingly before my small experience, that things fall together for me in such incredible ways. I find that if I step back, and get my nose out of a textbook for a small minute, just like the one described above, I see in a very limited way how planned--how very fated--my life is. Just as an example to help you follow my crazy train of thought, my chemistry and physics classes last year--some may remember me e-mailing home about my tribulations in those areas. I ended up not needing the classes at all, but I wouldn't trade the experience of them for the world. I met some of my best friends in those classes, and they taught me how to trust my Heavenly Father more than anything else has. Nothing like a dose of helplessness to send your world spiralling upward. True, that sort of thing may have happened to anyone, and probably does on a regular basis, but somehow that knowledge doesn't make the experience any less awesomely providential.

But to continue our earlier conversation, sometimes, when you're reading that textbook, a word will jump out and knock your nose out of the book, and new perspective is almost involuntary. I sort of feel dumb at those moments, like I just realized that this whole time someone's been talking to me and I wasn't listening at all. I just hope I haven't missed anything. Or that the Someone will be patient enough with me to repeat Himself. Sometimes it's not a word, but something you see, like a sunrise; or someone you meet, like a kindred spirit.

Things happen for a reason. I know this is true. Nothing is chanced. My thought is that since our eternal lives were bought at such an immeasurably high price, it is impossible that they will be left to wander where they may.

But you know, just because everything happens for a reason doesn't mean it shouldn't feel like serendipity.