A bizarre turn I’m unwilling to ascribe to fate

At the close of the last semester, I had every reason to believe that I’d be offered another teaching assistantship for the fall semester. Two instructors had approached me saying that they would like to have me as a TA–but the word around the department was that another person, a professor, was also interested in having me TA for her.

I made my plans accordingly. I had enough money in my checking account to live on throughout the summer. I would spend the summer working on my thesis and then take the assistantship in the fall. Come December, if I had not already found a job, I had enough money in my savings account to last 4-6 months while I searched for a job. I considered it a comfortable margin.

And so I proceeded.

But when May passed and June passed and July started to pass me by without receiving an assistantship offer, I had to assume that I would not be offered an assistantship. I started searching for positions in the Lincoln and Omaha area (having promised my roommate I’d remain in Lincoln until December.)

Today, I received a phone call from a University number–nothing surprising for me since I’d applied for several positions at the University.

But the call was not from one of those positions. It was from the Nutrition Graduate Department’s Administrative Assistant.

“Hi, Rebekah,” she said. “I’m getting ready to process payroll for the fall and realized that I still hadn’t received an acceptance from you for your assistantship.”

“That’s interesting,” I replied. “I hadn’t heard that I received an assistantship.”

But I had received an assistantship–and she’d emailed me the offer May 7, the last day of classes for fall semester. When I hadn’t promptly returned my acceptance, she e-mailed me again.

I received neither e-mail.

This time, she forwarded me the letter and I received it just fine.

She explained that I should pay no attention to the deadline for acceptance. She’d process my payroll papers and I could mail or drop off my acceptance any time.

So I have a job through December. I have the whole time. The rumors were true and I’ll be working with the professor.

A bizarre turn?

Absolutely.

Fate or luck?

I’m not willing to say that.

I believe that God is sovereign over every event of my life–even over misdirected or otherwise lost e-mails.

Why were both of those e-mails lost?

Maybe God wanted me to learn trust. Maybe God intends me to have one of these jobs I’ve applied for and knew I wouldn’t have applied for them if I had been secure in the knowledge of the assistantship. Maybe I’ll never know God’s plan in this.

But one thing I know: God knew exactly the moment each of those e-mails entered the ether–and He had a perfect plan for when and how and why things would turn out the way they did.

Because my life does not rest on the caprices of fate, but in the hands of a sovereign, all-powerful, all-loving God.