Everything was going according to plan. What caught me off guard, however, was the fact that this eagerly awaited phase brought a sense of loss to me that triggered a whole new wave of soul searching I had not anticipated.

We are not the masters of our own destinies. We are called to plan and strategize, to work and live active lives, to attempt things that are beyond us and tackle challenges that stretch us to the limit. Yet the outcome of our efforts, even our ability to exert ourselves, is always in God's hands.

Dear God,' I said inside myself, 'when I came here, maybe I was partly running off from home for fun and freedom and adventure. But I have a notion that You had something else in mind in letting me come. Anyway if You can use me here in this Cove, well, here I am.

When the dream of our heart is one that God has planted there, a strange happiness flows into us. At that moment, the spiritual resources of the universe are released to help us.

Although we might settle for less, Heavenly Father won't, for he sees us as the glorious beings we are capable of becoming.

It was a dream of mine to be in an action film.

I was not sure where I was going, and I could not see what I would do when I got [there]. But you saw further and clearer than I, and you opened the seas before my ship, whose track led me across the waters to a place I had never dreamed of, and which you were even then preparing to be my rescue and my shelter and my home.

For each one of us, there is only one thing necessary: to fulfill our own destiny, according to God's will, to be what God wants us to be.

It is true that we are called to create a better world. But we are first of all called to a more immediate and exalted task: that of creating our own lives.

We must make the choices that enable us to fulfill the deepest capacities of our real selves.

In all His acts God orders all things, whether good or evil, for the good of those who know Him and seek Him and who strive to bring their own freedom under obedience to His divine purpose. All that is done by the will of God in secret is done for His glory and for the good of those whom He has chosen to share in His glory.

What is the use of praying if at the very moment of prayer, we have so little confidence in God that we are busy planning our own kind of answer to our prayer?