You may have made choices you wouldn’t make today, but that doesn’t mean you forfeited the possibility of a beautiful future. God can work with the years you wish you’d spent differently, the lesson you learned late, and the road you never meant to take. Your life is still allowed to become something you are grateful you stayed to see.

Angel: She thinks she ruined the whole plan.

God: I know.

Angel: She keeps going back to that one decision. She thinks if she had chosen differently, her entire life would be different now.

God: Maybe it would be.

Angel: That doesn’t make her feel better.

God: I’m not asking her to pretend her choices don’t have consequences. I’m asking her to stop believing one wrong decision has more authority over her future than I do.

Then she learned something about the right one

Jacqueline Whitney

Angel: She thinks she wasted years.

God: I can work with years.

Angel: She thinks she stayed too long.

God: I can still lead her out.

Angel: She thinks she missed the opportunity.

God: I can create another one.

Angel: She thinks she chose the wrong person.

God: Then she learned something about the right one.

Angel: She keeps asking what her life would look like if she hadn’t made the mistake.

God: And while she’s looking backward, I’m still writing forward.

Angel: So she didn’t ruin everything?

God: She couldn’t if she tried. Tell her to stop giving one chapter the power to decide how the whole story ends.

Jacqueline Whitney is the author Held: A 50 Day Devotional For Parents and All That You Deserve.