In his book Invitation to a Journey, author M. Robert Mulholland Jr. tells the story of a woman he met who was the result of an unwanted pregnancy. She struggled immensely with the idea that God purposed us into being before the foundation of the world. He writes:

Her mother was a prostitute, and she was the accidental byproduct of her mother's occupation. Although her life's pilgrimage had brought her to faith in Christ, blessed her with a deeply Christian husband and beautiful children, and given her a life of love and stability, she was obsessed with the need to find out who her father was. This obsession was affecting her marriage, her family, and her life.

She told how one day she was standing at the kitchen sink, washing the dishes, with tears of anguish and frustration running down her face into the dishwater. In her agony she cried out, "Oh, God, who is my father?" Then, she said, she heard a voice saying to her, "I am your father."

The voice was so real she turned to see who had come into the kitchen, but there was no one there. Again the voice came, "I am your father, and I have always been your father."

In that moment she knew the profound reality of which Paul [speaks in many of his letters]. She came to know that deeper than the "accident" of her conception was the eternal purpose of a loving God, who had spoken her forth into being before the foundation of the world.