Proverbs 16:9 says: A man’s heart deviseth his way: but the LORD directeth his steps. There’s an old adage that states if you want to hear GOD laugh, tell him your plans. Not only does HE direct a righteous man’s path, but HE also controls the wicked. The majority of people actually believe that they make their own decisions and forge their own path, but the truth of the matter is all eight billion plus people on Earth are programmed to do YAHAWAH’s will. Prophecy would be impossible to fulfill unless HE had complete control of everyone and everything. Satan doesn’t do his own thing without the LORD’s permission, and neither do we. No one becomes rich or ends up poor without the LORD’s say, and no one dies without it being sanctioned by HIM.

What I’m about to write next is a true story that recently happened in my life. This testimony may or may not convince my readership that the idea of free will is nothing but an illusion, but this chronicle of my life really did happen. I currently work at a law firm as a paralegal and have been employed there for almost nine years. Throughout the course of my history there, I’ve encountered some very interesting people, but there was this particular young lady who stood out from the crowd. We never formally met, but we’d spoken to each other once or twice on the elevator over the course of a few years that she worked in the same high rise building as I did. She was very attractive―about five foot nine or ten, slim and shapely, shoulder-length hair, and smooth caramel skin. She also appeared to be the center of attention within her peer group, and if I were younger and still single, I would’ve definitely shown a romantic interest in her. But that’s neither here nor there.

I also write fiction in my spare time and have been doing so for fifteen years. Fiverr is the site where I use freelancers to create my book covers and edit my work, and roughly five years ago, I chose this particular freelancer from the UK to put together the cover with the images I’d picked from Shutterstock. Finding the guy for the cover was easy―I needed someone who looked suave because the main character was a nightclub owner and playboy. However, the girl was a different story. She needed to be someone who was alluring but dangerous―a seductive-looking beauty who was also capable of taking a man for everything that he had if it suited her. It took me about an hour to find the perfect mate for my protagonist, and I published this book two weeks later. A few months had passed, and my novel started to gain some traction on Amazon.

Now here was where things got interesting. The model-like beauty who I saw from time to time was on her way to lunch with her coworkers one weekday afternoon. She turned her head and shot a glance at me for several seconds, and it seemingly stopped me in my tracks before I went inside of the building. It was the weirdest thing because we never had a conversation outside of saying hello to one another, but the look she gave said a thousand words. She pursed her lips as a sign of respect or acknowledgement for something and quickly turned her attention away from me as she walked in the opposite direction with the group, but I didn’t understand why at that moment. However, I didn’t give it a second thought until later on that evening after work.

The spirit then prompted me to browse through my book cover images that I used for my novels, and what I found had me completely stunned. The girl at work and the girl on my book cover were one in the same! It turned out that she was, in fact, a part-time model who posted her images in the Shutterstock library, and perhaps she got notified when someone purchased one of the images from her online catalog. Even so, I thought about the odds of something like that happening, but then it hit me―this chance encounter with the young lady was all the LORD’s doing.

I would see her again for the last time on one specific day―I had a twelve o’clock paralegal training session on another floor of my firm, and it just so happened that this training class was the same floor that my muse worked on. I had gotten off the elevator to go to my class, and she got off another elevator car seconds later. Her smile widened instantly, and I waved at her and asked how she was doing. She hesitated for a split second and replied that she was fine and walked to her firm on the opposite side of the floor. I wanted to ask for her name and thank her for gracing my book cover, but I never got the chance. It was a minute before my training started as the opportunity never presented itself. I guess it wasn’t meant to be. Maybe she had landed another job, or her modelling career took off. Nevertheless, I’m sure that in the thick of our brief interactions lie a hidden message of some sort. I believe that the LORD wanted to show HIS power and remind me of who’s really in control of everything. All praise, honor, and glory go to Yahawah Bahasham Yahawashi.