Fate, Apr.1996

(From a letter to my sister, Anne. Dated 04.20.1996. I was in my third and last school for the navy program that I was in. Life was the toughest it had ever been for me, to that point. The spelling and grammar has been corrected but the words are the same.)

So, what’s up with me. Not a whole lot. The last time I wrote you I was pretty messed up. A couple of days after I wrote it, I called Dad and talked to him about my whole theory of predestined. I also wrote a letter to the priest I knew in Orlando. Dad explained the error of my thoughts. Here’s the scoop.

Man has free will. God can see everything, but only as possibilities. For everything we do, there are more possibilities that he sees. He can’t see what choices we’ll make, though, until we actually make it, because we have free will. He sees all the possible choices that we will ever have to make, for all the situations and choices in our lives, but until we choose, it’s only possibilities. When we make a decision, certain possibilities cease to be possibilities. He also had certain possibilities that he would like us to follow, but he does not make us follow them.

That’s pretty much what you said. So, “What it all comes down to” is this: “The future’s not set, there is no fate but what we make for ourselves.” When the priest wrote back to me, he said (almost word for word) what Dad said over the phone. It’s cool how knowledgeable Dad is. Especially about our faith.