Prepared For Us

To follow-up last night’s post, I have some good news. Alex talked to his roommate and explained to him about his SSA. His roommate was understanding and told Alex that his girlfriend’s dad is a psychiatrist, who has many clients that deal with SSA. After Alex told me that, I sent him a text back saying “Funny how people are prepared like that, huh?”

It made me think about all of the “coincidences” that I’ve experienced along the way. I’ve been very conscious of them since I came home from Toronto, but even more so since I started participating in the LDS SSA community. As if I need any proof, I’m going to share a few examples.

Justin is the one right behind me in the red shirt

Let’s start with Justin, my old roommate. First off, before he even knew about my SSA, there were “coincidences” just surrounding him. (1) He served in the same mission as my older brother, Brett, though they barely overlapped. (2) My first Sunday in that ward (long before he was my roommate) he just happened to be the Mission Prep teacher and as we later found out (3) my home teacher. Now for the good stuff. I lived with Justin during summer 2011 before I left for my trial mission in Calgary. I’ve mentioned this before, but when I told him about my SSA, just chuckled (which utterly confused me) and said “Spencer, I think we were supposed to be roommates.” After that, he proceeded to tell me about investigators and companions who dealt with combinations of anxiety, Aspergers, SSA, etc. In that way, Justin was prepared to be my roommate when I needed him.

Me, Caleb, Juliana, Becca, and
Steve at Caleb and Juliana's reception

Now to another example. As I’ve mentioned before, after receiving the prompting to begin blogging about my SSA, I decided that I needed to make a list of people I had to tell before I outed myself to the world, because I wanted them to hear it from me and not from Facebook. On that list was my good friend Juliana. Though we had had rocky times in our friendship in the year previous, I still considered her a very close friend. It was around mid-September. I’d told Juliana I wanted to talk and because I’d been so vague about it she was kind of worrying about what was going on. Finally, we were able to meet up and we talked, we caught up on life, and I told her about my SSA. I’ve gotta say, she was one of the people I was most worried about telling, because of how rocky things had been earlier that year. However, things could have not gone better. Later that day, in fact, Juliana texted me and told me that her husband, Caleb, had actually done some gospel-based research about SSA in the past (I had given her permission to tell Caleb). What a coincidence, huh? Her husband already had some understanding on the subject. What are the odds?

One more story… actually, this one is more of an idea, since it hasn’t happened yet. I was talking with Calvin once about this actually. Having known women like Danielle Mansfield and Lolly Weed and knowing how much of a strain SSA could put on a marriage, I feel as though the women who marry men with SSA have to be pretty amazing, charitable, Christ-like women. Exceptional even. And I believe that God will prepare one of His daughters to be that for me, to bless me throughout my life and throughout the eternities.

I’m sure if I sat here long enough I could think of even more stories to tell you. However, I’ve already told you so many, remember? Steve, James, Thomas, and Alex. No, none of these are exactly proof of what I’ve been saying. There will always be people will attribute the hand of the Lord to coincidence. However, I don’t believe in such a myth. I believe in the Lord. I believe in His plan. I believe in the Atonement, the means by which our most trying times can make things get better.