“There are no mistakes, no coincidences. All events are blessings given to us to learn from.”
~Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
I always hear the phrase, accidents happen, and for the longest time I believed it to be true. Things, little coincidences, just happen sometimes. You run into someone at the store that you haven’t seen in a long time seems like it would be a coincidence. You meeting someone that you may have more than a few things in common with is just a happy coincidence. You having some sort of accident happen to you or a family member, perhaps a car accident, is just a terrible accident that should’ve never happened, right? Wrong.
I used to believe that but somewhere along this journey of my life I have come to know that there is no such thing as coincidences and accidents. If you were to believe that things in your life happen by accident, or coincidence, then that is to say that you don’t believe that there is a plan that God has already laid out for you before you were even born into this world.
I meet different people all of the time but they don’t all stick, they don’t all get invited into my inner circle. But the ones that do, the ones that have been there no matter what, I know that I did not meet them by accident and there was no coincidence in those meetings. They were placed before me, by God, because he knew that I needed them in my life, and perhaps that they needed me too.
I have come to realize over the years that there is a reason for everything that happens in your life, and that they don’t just accidentally happen. I have been in several car accidents in my life, two in which I could have died in. I know that technically they are deemed car accidents but I in many ways see them as signs. Maybe they were to wake me up to the fact that, although for a large part of my life I thought I was just here by mistake (mostly because my mother told me that I was one) and that I had no good to share with the rest of the world, I am in fact here for a reason.
My best friend, Ms. L. and I met coincidentally, or so I always thought. We were in college and one night I went into the T.V. lounge and she was sitting there watching T.V. We struck up a conversation and began to hang out, initially meeting in the lounge almost every night, and then trading time in each other’s dorm rooms.
Two girls, from two different types of backgrounds, with two totally different levels of self esteem and confidence; one who was (or at least appeared to be) very sure of herself, and one who was still lost trying to figure out what version of herself was the right one to let the rest of the world see (that would be me).
We couldn’t have been more different, but oddly enough we couldn’t have been more alike either. Looking back now, on what I thought was a coincidence I see that we were always supposed to meet. I can’t even imagine my life without her in it and there are so many benefits of having her as my best friend and knowing she will always be in my corner no matter what, and I in hers.
I don’t believe that I met her by accident, nor any of the other people who I deem to be significant in my life. Much like Ms. L., they all drive me, to be better, to be more consistent. They make me want to be a better friend, a better person, and force me to see in myself what they see in me.
The thing is that you never know what the reason is for any one particular circumstance that you are going through. And you won’t know until you have seen your way through those circumstances. There is a reason, or rather, a purpose for every turning point (good or bad) in your life. And nothing ever happens by accident.
Jimmetta Carpenter
Writer/Editor
The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)
Writing as “Jaycee Durant”
http://unpleasantlyplump.wordpress.com/
http://www.facebook.com/people/Jimmetta-Carpenter/1069480310
Write 2 Be 
Who loves you? I do! I do!!!
It’s a nice thought, but completely irrational. If I run into an old friend at the store, it’s nice, but it’s only because we both were shopping in that store at the same time. Not because there is some cosmic puppet master controlling us, making us run into each other. The car accident that recently totaled my car was because the teenager driving the other car was texting and not looking at the road. That was the reason. No big mystery there.
Everyone is entitled to believe what the want to believe. I believe that EVERYTHING happens for a reason, even the bad things, sometimes especially the bad things. I have had a lot of good things come out of chance meetings and yes even a car accident. Sometimes the bad thing that happens to us isn’t even meant to mean something to us but rather to the other person involved. In your case maybe your car accident was meant to teach the teenager that was texting while driving a much needed lesson. You just happened to be the vessel that was used to teach that lesson. I guess you choose to see things in a negative manner and I choose to find the good out of any circumstance. Our struggles and the bad things we go through often times makes us much stronger than perhaps others who haven’t had to go through the same things. Try having a better outlook on things.