Serendipity or Syncronicity or Something Better?

So, I'm going back to school next month, to get a Master's in Professional Counseling. Over the last year or so I've been pretty confident that this is the path I'm being led down, that God has something planned for me here. But God doesn't issue some kind of blaring continuous siren, and so it has been easy at times to think I just made it up in made head.

I've counted on periodic encouragement or success at each step to be my assurance that this is right...a good GRE score, an interesting set of interviews, my acceptance to school (naturally). But the best encouragements have been in the form of friends, family or even near-strangers offering support.

I've given myself a luxury of sorts this time, the luxury of leaving the program, with no regrets, should this turn out to be not for me. In the past I've been pretty dogmatic about finishing what I've started, which doesn't leave a lot of room for a change of heart or anything else, really. But now I find myself here in the lull between orientation and the actual start of classes, which has given me plenty of time to rethink my decision.

So as I was paying my flooring guy a couple of days ago (who, incidentally, is a real artist in wood) I mentioned how glad I was to have this done before my school started. He asked what I was studying, I told him, and then he proceeded to tell me his story. He had been in rehab for a prescription drug addiction, and he knew that his counselors and psychiatrists had saved his life. He spent more than an hour telling me about the experience. His gratitude to that place, his amazement at his change in circumstance, both into the addiction and then back out, and his enthusiasm for the results that confronting problems head-on and winning...it was overwhelming. What an honor for him to share his story with me!

I'm pretty sure that he has no idea what an encouragement he was to me that day. I've thought about the coincidence of his talking to me and I'm pretty sure it wasn't just a coincidence. I am so grateful for these small gifts along my way. That is pretty cool.