The Mission and Assignments in Life

         We have a favorite story in my culture about a man with the worst luck in the world. People loved him because he seemed to attract the bad luck away from them. It was like his assignment in life was to experience everyone’s bad luck so they would have an easy life. One day he was seen crying on the side of the road. People asked him what is wrong, and he answered: “Nothing has gone wrong today. God must have forgotten me!” Within this context we can say that God did not forget Jasmine. She had plenty of bad luck and experiences, and yet her good luck is that she had the resources to escape each problem successfully. 

      Jasmine believes in God and that He makes assignments – gives us experiences that we are supposed to have to move us into the next assignment. Mukherjee writes, “The Lord lends us a body, gives us an assignment, and sends us down. When we get the job done, the Lord calls us home again for the next assignment” (Mukherjee 59). Assignments can also be interpreted as experiences. Each experience that Jasmine had prepared her or took her to the next assignment or experience. A friend of mine told me once that as she looks back on her life the worst curses of her life were also her best blessings. For example, she lost her health, but she lost it at a time when her children needed her home to keep them out of trouble with drugs, gangs and pregnancies. She apologized to her son that she did not keep her promise after the divorce to provide him with a home, yard and a decent life. He told her he was happy for their poverty because it provided perspective on life he would not have otherwise and it prevented him from becoming a jerk like his father. Jasmine also had curses that were blessings. She was cursed with Half-face, but because of that experience she found Lillian Gordon, Taylor and herself. 

      Jasmine says that perhaps her father’s assignment was to die “in a freakish accident” so she could be to fall in love with Prakash (Mukherjee 59). Perhaps Prakash died after making all the arrangements for Jasmine to get to America so that she would go alone and grow into the person who would adopt a Vietnamese boy and have her own baby. No one knows the will of God or what we are meant to do in this life. John Lennon said that life is what happens when you are making other plans. I came to the U.S. and got involved with someone who gave me bad advice, lost my scholarship and returned home in shame. It was the worst moment of my life and also the best. I learned exactly how much my family loved me. It was a turning point in my life and now all that I lost has been recovered and I am older, wiser, and much more appreciative of the experience. My bad experience is used as a warning to others, and my good experience is being used to inspire others. 

      Was my first experience an accident or an assignment? Should I thank the person who screwed up my life? Jesus said to pray for those who spitefully use us, and I think this means that perhaps they are fulfilling their assignment and instead of being horrible people, perhaps they are the angels on earth sent to help us. Only God knows. Jasmine chose to see God’s hand in her life, and see that she had choices to make, but those choices were due to situations that she did not choose, but were perhaps provided by God so she and others could fulfill their assignments.