Avoid Capture by IF

I’ve been here before, covered this ground, but a refresher/reminder/rekindler can be good. Anyone can spout psychological babble (babel), but there is a point to some of what I do.
“IF” is the enemy for a balanced, well reasoned person. “If” can tear you up with might-have-beens…which never will be.
“If I had only done things differently
If I had given her/him another chance
If I had said yes instead of no
No instead of yes… “
I once had a friend tormented by an IF which happened when she was six or so years old-her family moved to another state, and she never got over the experience. We would visit the house where she had been a child, sit outside in a car, while she relived those days, telling me about the neighbors who had lived in nearby houses. Sad doesn’t cover it.
Unbalanced by an IF.
I don’t worry about the future, and I don’t exert an ounce of mind-sweat being troubled by the past; my actual past or various possible pasts invented by “IF”. I make my plans, take care of myself, but I entrust my present and future to God.
A cod-swallop theology which I rejected as soon as I heard it had to do with IF. I was once told: “Every man should be married, as there is a woman meant for him to have as his wife, and if a man remains unmarried, he is selfishly keeping that woman from having the husband she was meant to have.”
Who told me this? A church lady. I don’t even remember which church, as I’ve moved around a lot, but it was back in my Pentecostal days. Pentecostals are generally strong on emotion, very weak on theology.
It was inevitable- whenever I would start to visit at a church: “My goodness! Here’s Nancy! She’s not married either!” “My goodness! Doug, have you met Thea? She’s single too!” “Doug, meet Pam-she’s not…” you get the idea.
I believe that if God wanted me to be married, I would be. If he want’s me to meet the woman of my future and get married, it will happen. If I am to remain single throughout my life, then that is what will happen. Those Ifs belong to God.
Don’t give in, never surrender to the shifting sands of IF.