I am the way and the truth and the life.

I often find myself looking ahead. I like to make plans. What is my goal? Where will I be in five years? Where am I going? What is the meaning of my life? What does God want me to do with my life? What is my calling?

But often I don't know what the future will bring me. I wait for His voice, and in the meantime, go on with my life. I have taken a different path at times in recent years, but actually I always come back to the main road. I walk on and stay on the familiar road.

I think I've been walking straight all my life. As I look back over the past 20 years I see very clearly God's direction in my life. The road I have traveled is not straight. It is a winding path with many different side trails.

Of course, the correct answer is to say that God has been working with me since my baptism on Oct. 14, 1990, now 35 years ago. But I actually notice more that with receiving the sacrament of confirmation on Nov. 27, 2004, now 21 years ago, something structurally changed. I became an adult. At first, I made choices like a child. But the period after my confirmation, I changed direction. I got a digital camera with my Holy Confirmation. When I look back at it now, it is a very bad camera, but the technology used to be not as good as now either. But this is purely materialistic. The main thing I look back on is what I did with the pictures. I wanted to publish them. I wanted to share them with the world. I spent a lot of time in my teenage years tinkering with websites to publish the photos. I had no clue what it was all about, and with making many mistakes I learned how to make a website. Also looking back now very amateurish, but still. For a boy of 14, it was still quite nice.

My interest in photography and technology started during this period. As a child I was very much into conservation, bird spotting and I made all kinds of drawings in perspective. My father was a landscaper and I wanted to become a landscaper partly because I could draw so well. So I went to high school where you could learn that. But halfway through high school my first intersection came my way. I no longer wanted to be a landscaper but to do something with computers. What it was I didn't know yet, but that I wanted to take the course was certain before I started third grade.

The moment I graduated from high school and got my diploma then I fell in love. It only lasted 3 months. But now looking back I can say that it was good. We were not meant for each other. The day she broke up with me I went to church. I remember. It was Thursday night, Oct. 23, 2008, now 17 years ago. I was sad and felt comforted by the church. I felt a calling in me that said. Why don't you become a priest. I thought, "No, that's not for me. I like girls. You can't do that as a priest. No way, that's nothing for me." A few weeks later on Sunday, there was a woman sitting in front of me in church who said to me, "Isn't becoming a priest something for you?" I don't remember who that woman is. All I remember is that it made me feel good. I went to talk to our chaplain and he told me. "You are still young. You just started an education. You need to let this mature."