Choosing Blessing
Sun 03 Nov 2013 Filed in: Reflections
I'm blaming Robert Frost for my current train of thought. This is the time of the year when I find myself thinking about choices. It is not that other seasons require fewer or less significant choices, but the vivid changes of fall provide an appropriate backdrop to considering the choices one makes. I have little in common with Robert Frost, but I had to memorize his poem in school too many years ago. You might remember it as well, the one about two roads diverged in a yellow wood.... It's probably Robert Frost's fault.
I'm pretty much happy with the choices I have made, even though some of them were painful. If you have lived long enough, you will have discovered that some choices bring unavoidable pain, perhaps to yourself, perhaps to others. Just about everyone in my generation has made such choices, and some of us are bold enough to admit it. But a painful choice is not necessarily a bad one. (A mundane example: We recently decided to sign up with a nearby fitness center. It is a decision bound to cause some discomfort, but it is a good decision; some pain is worth it.)
I live in an age when the strong temptation is to choose the road of least pain. Well-meaning but occasionally misguided friends encourage that choice. It is a well-worn path, and sometimes it is a good one, but not always. I have come to enough forks in the road to have figured out that the road of least pain is often not the path of greatest blessing. And since I have to choose, blessing is better. Walking through the valley with the One who knows the way has got to beat trying to avoid the valley without him!
So maybe Robert Frost and I do have something in common. When I come to those points where two roads diverge in a yellow wood, I'm likely to make the same choice he did:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I --
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
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