Free Will vs God's Plan

You guys all have interesting perspectives

I have never heard that. My spouse grew up catholic and never heard that either.

What is it that you "never heard", Betsy? If it was my own post, I was quoting directly from the Catholic Catechism. The Question and Answer little booklet given to all Catholic children; at least it was when I went to school in the 1930s and 40s.

I'm not Christian and this is totally off topic....

I believe that we are born to this world to complete a task. Sometimes we were born with our Karma from our past life. We have the free will not to complete this task. The older souls are the spiritual people who try to find spiritual meaning in their life. The younger souls are those who just want to party all day long and only care for themselves. When we are born, our life movie starts playing. We decide to switch to a different version of the scene.

For example there is this busy women who is riding the subway. She drops coffee on her shirt, drops her bag, and she isn't having a good day. When she reaches the subway the subway doors close. She turns around instead of opening the subway door. If she would have opened the door, she would have found her soulmate. However, because she was already having a bad day she didn't want to go through the struggle of opening the subway door.

As I understand.
We all have a (planned) life, but we follow it like nothing is planned at all. Making one think we have (free will, but we never do, always walking a path set for us.
No matter faith or God/dess we follow.

In reply to the original post, this is how I explain it, being Christian myself. God's plan is "destiny," or what going to happen. Destiny has 3 equal parts:

1. Free Will (our choices)
2. Chance/Luck
3. Fate (God's will/what happens)

Fate is the end result, thus God's will. But Fate is also made up of 3 equal parts:

1. Free Will (our choices)
2. Chance/Luck
3. Destiny (God's path)

There are some theologians that claim there is only divine will, that we cannot think or act for ourselves - that we were born destine to Heaven or Hell. However, this is just as foolish as those that think their horoscope, written in the stars, takes their free will leaving us as little more that puppets to astrology. We must take from the divine and act for ourselves. What will be will be, but we must chose our own paths. Keep in mind, this is not to say that God or astrology (seeing that is the other example I used) have no power, as clearly both do. It is to say that we have power to make our own path, and that God and astrology may both work through without sapping us or others of our free will.

Hope that helps.