A Reason or Stupid Choice???

I have been told since I was a small child that God has a plan for us all, that he knows what is going to happen before it happens. I have questioned this a lot over my life because the Bible also states that we are created in the likeness of God but that we have free will, if we are given free will how can God know what we are going to do. If we have a choice in what we do then how does God know what we are going to do, aren't we just doing what he wants us to do???

I have always thought that things in your life happen to teach you things about yourself but what does having someone else beat the crap out of you teach you about yourself that you couldn't have learnt another way? I like to think that I have learnt from all my mistakes and that without the experiences I have had in my life I wouldn't be the person I am today, but does that mean that if other things had happened in my life would I have been worse off than I am now? My mother says that sometimes you need to be hit with a baseball bat to learn your lesson and that is why God gives some people harder lives than others. I am not sure how I feel about this statement either. In the bible it states that when you marry it is for life "til death due you part" so if this is the case and you marry a man that beats the crap out of...okay you have learnt the lesson that you should have picked someone else :) but how do you fix this in your life, after all you married him and in the eyes of God you are married to him forever no matter what. What good does it do to learn a lesson that you can do nothing to change?

There are verses in the bible (Ecclesiastes 3: 1-8) that state everything happens when it is supposed to happen:

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven:

A time to be born, a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;

A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

a time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war and a time of peace.

So again my question is if God has planned out a time for every thing then when is he leaving you to use your free will? I am not sure which I believe, I do think that you can learn out of everything you do in your life if you are open to hearing the messages in your mistakes, but I am not sure that everything has a reason. A good friend of mine said that if everything happens for a reason then home most of the time we have no idea what that reason is? And this is a great question. Not only that but if everything has a reason then why do we sit and look at our lives and regret the choices we have made. If you choose a certain path and there was a reason for that path why when you get to the fork at the end of the road do you wish you could go back and travel down the other road?

I don't know if we will ever know the answer to this question, I like to think that there is a reason for the many stupid choices I have made in my life...but maybe they are just that stupid choices :)