Whatever happens, don't go forward with regrets. Keep trucking along and know that God's plan and your life aren't predestined. God put you here for a very particular reason, sure, but whether or not your current, carefully laid plans work out has no bearing on whether or not God will accomplish His own plan through you.

God makes us as tools to further the Plan of His Creation. God chooses us like colors in a pack of colored pencils. If he made you red, and he needs the color red at this stage his work, he will pick you up and see if you have kept yourself sharpened. If you are dull, and unwilling to do as he designed you, he will break out the blade and sharpen you himself. If you consistently refuse to do as he intended, forcing him to sharpen you time and time again, then after he is done with your color he will cast you aside and forget about you until such a time you have repented, sharpened yourself, and he finds you again having placed yourself among the pack of colors, ready to put on the finishing touches of his wonderous Creation. If you do not repent, God absolutely will mix others to fill the void you left, disappointed and broken-hearted that what he made had abandoned him.

God will never abandon you. We abandon God by not asking for His Merciful forgiveness. There is no measure of time, space, or thought for how quickly God can forgive. It is solely up to us to deny the sins of our Self, take up the burden of our Cross, and follow Him.

You can do no permanent wrong so long as you keep yourself sharp for the Lord. There will be times even when you are sharp where the nib of your point is broken off in the excitement of God's passion for Creation. These are the low times, where we all struggle for seemingly no reason. God will not rub you to the wood. He will finish using you to the point you can bear, put you lovingly back among the family of colors, and he will give you time to sharpen yourself once more.

Do not think he has abandoned you when times are hard -- for it is in those times that your splendidly tinged leaden core is being used to color His Masterpiece. When times are calm, that is the time to sharpen yourself, repent of your sins, and prepare for when God will take you from the pack again to draw our Paradise here in the waking world.