No, I don't think he favors me specifically. I'm also not a believer in predestination (at least, not the bit where everything we do is preordained), though others in my family are and it's a point of theological debate.

My gratitude to God is not in his divine intervention, but rather in his divine allowance, that he allows the oppurtunity to effect change for the better and provides the ability to find succour. That he also allows the oppurtunity to fall into ruin or despair is the inevitable drawback of freedom. Some people see God as the establisher or provider of order, but I see him instead as the provider of possibility , from Creation onwards.

I could have very well died from that car hitting him, and I know my parents would have tried to comfort themselves by saying it was God's Will that I have died that day. But to me God's Will wasn't that I live on, but that I had the oppurtunity to either die or live. And if I lived, then that was my oppurtunity to make something of that which he gave me. When I say he had my back, I'm referring to having choice, rather than the illusion of choice others I know and love seem to believe in. That in the end, I'm grateful for the ability to do well and prosper, but also understanding the capacity to fail greatly and suffer (which my family has dealt with over the past decade in many ways).

Does that make sense to you? English isn't my first language and I've never really talked about it at length with more than two or three people, so I might be verbalizing it badly.