hindsight is always 20/20

when i moved to canada back in 1998, my world crashed down around me, and i wasn't being melodramatic. the move was sudden and completely unexpected. it was the hardest time i ever had in my life. i was torn from everything that i dreamed of, hoped for, and finally got; academic success and a close group of friends.

i was on my way to stuyvesant high school, the most prestigious public high school in new york city. students were only admitted after passing an entrance exam. i had studied for two years for that exam, sacrificing my weekends and summers to go to "cram school". stuyvesant was my ticket to ivey league universities and a brilliant future.

after years of being the outcast at schools because i moved around so much, i finally had a group of friends with the same ambitions and the same interests. we studied together and we partied together. we were inseparable. until i had to move.

the first half year in canada was brutal. i was depressed. life held no meaning, no purpose, no point. i breathed, but i did not live. it was heartbreaking for me to wake up in the mornings to face.....nothing. no future, no hope, no dreams. i would have preferred not to have woken up at all. i felt like a zombie.

yet if i could go back in time and choose whether to stay in new york or to move to canada. i would choose to move to canada and gladly go through the pain and anguish again. because moving to canada brought me to true life. it brought me back to God because i had sacrificed not only my weekends and summers, but my relationship with Him in pursuit of a mere idol. the move brought me to His plans, not mine. i had to die to myself, to my desires, to my plans, to my hopes, to my dreams, and it hurt like hell. but it was worth it. in retrospect, everything He planned far outweighed everything i ever planned.

i would not give up a holiday to the beach for making mud pies in the slums.
i would not give up where He has brought me and where He is leading me for the shadow of a life that i would have choosen for myself. i say this with the 20/20 vision of hindsight, but knowing this...

Father i know in my heart and in my mind that You are unbelieavably good to me, and that whatever You have planned will outshine my hopes and plans by a trillion.