Today I’m celebrating my 20th wedding anniversary with my beloved husband.
-We have such a good relationship that I am ready to throw in another 20 years – And i recon that he feels the same 🙂
And what a wonderful day this is. 25 degrees celsius and blue skies above. The trees have beautiful green leaves and the birds are chirping away. It doesn’t get any better than this.
Today I had lunch with a good friend – and we came to talk about fate and karma.
During this conversation, an interesting reflection struck me. If it hadn’t been for my problematic stomach, my IBS – my husband Magnus and I probably would never have met!!
Let’s go back – 24 years….
I was employed at Ericsson in Denmark, lived in a small town on the west coast of Jutland, and worked with support, installation and customer training.
Back in 1994 I traveled a lot to Sweden, Hungary and a number of countries in Asia. Among other things, I had a mission in Malaysia that would take me back and forth between Malaysia and Denmark for parts of the autumn.
On the first trip down there, my stomach suffered a massive meltdown!!!
safe at home between assignments, both my employer and i came to the conclusion that i would not be ready to return to malaysia according to plans and committed dates. A colleague of mine had to take over the assignment and i had some more days to recover and then undertake his assignment in Hungary.
Once in Hungary, I worked on an installation of a system that many Swedes were also involved in – including previous aquaintances of mine – The couple Johanna Lundin and Magnus Jäder. During the mission in Hungary we became close friends and towards the end of the assignment they suggested that I come to Sweden and work more permanently. At first I kindly rejected this and went home to Denmark.
Once back in the small town where i lived, I realized it was time to move on, contacted Johanna and asked if they were serious in the offering. A month later I boarded the plane to Sweden and a 6 month short-term employment in Stockholm.
Just a few weeks after moving to Stockholm, I was invited to a party hosted by one of my new colleagues. She just got engaged and they had bought a house. Her fiancé had invited one of his colleagues, which turned out to be my Magnus. And the rest is history…..
I can therefore single out my IBS as the one factor that led me on the way to moving to Sweden, meeting Magnus and thus creating the life I have today. I definitely didn’t have a thought about that as I was chained to the toilet for a week in August 1994!
NOTHING is so bad that it’s not good for something and we never know what the future holds in line for us. Life hits us in many ways – but it’s how we choose to relate that shapes who we are and how our life becomes – and you NEVER know what actually affects the future. Often, it is the small decisions that we are not even aware of that will have the greatest impact on how things actually turn out.