“You can’t connect the dots looking forward you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something: your gut, destiny, life, and karma, whatever. Because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well-worn path.” –

Steve Jobs (speaking at the Stanford Commencement address in 2005)

I wish Mr. Jobs wasn’t so successful and so well thought of in our world. I wish this came from the guy who invented Betamax videos, the USFL or Breakfast Mates (the cereal, dry milk, and spoon combination.) They would have been easier to dismiss than the founder of the Apple Empire.

I so badly want only to do things that are productive, things that are valuable, things that have worth. I want only to look forward to the things that are going to turn out good; unfortunately, I can’t always see the future and what it holds.

One thing that the kids at The Children’s Home continue to teach me is that our past is paramount in what we are becoming in the future. They possess such wonderful qualities today because they have begun to connect the dots of their past. They realize that their story is different, even better because of the lessons and struggles they have overcome. They connect the dots. They can look back and see God placing just the right person or just the right situation in their path to accomplish something in their own life that they couldn’t do on their own. It is humbling to think that The Children’s Home is a dot leading to their future.

I too often am worrying about the future instead of connecting the dots of my past and realizing that my future is going to be OK. Things have worked out; God provided people that have been incredibly helpful; important things happened at just the right times; the past really has been purposeful rather than chaotic. This realization allows me to with confidence move forward to chase things that are not always a guarantee. It also encourages me to be the dot in other people’s lives.