The Road Not Taken

Our kids are right smack in the middle of the growing into adulthood years. Well, I guess every year is a growing into adulthood year, but... the teen years REEK of it. ;) With the youngest at 14 and the eldest at 20, there hasn't been a TON of life decisions and choices yet, but occasionally I will see a picture or a path or a possibility or even a person, and I am just overcome with thanks that, even when we didn't know what was best, He did. Garth's "Unanswered Prayers" starts playing on repeat in my head, or "God Blessed the Broken Road".

Other times, I will catch a glimpse of something we thought might be a reality for one of them that has not shaken out, and I feel nostalgic or sad. In those moments, that old Little Texas song, "What Might Have Been" drifts through my mind.

My favorite poem has always been "The Road Not Taken", by Robert Frost. I memorized it as a young, young kid, and have kept it close since that day. When I was in high school, so solid and certain of my future, that poem's first stanza served to remind me that I had done my research and looked down the paths available to me, and I was choosing well. I knew where I was headed and what I would do there, and I could see my future mapped out ahead of me as clearly as a path to travel.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

 I remember in college, after a really drastic life change period that included a 180 degree change in my major and a resulting complete flip in my career plans and  the end of a relationship that was almost four years long and that I had been certain was my future spouse, that poem came to rest in an essay I wrote in my Teaching Writing class. In those weeks and months, everything I thought I knew about my life and myself and my future was rocked, but I was the one doing the rocking. I wasn't taking the path I had always expected to take. I wasn't going to be a physical therapist, and I wasn't going to marry my high school sweetheart. Instead, I was going to do the one job I always said I would never do... become a teacher. And, in a crazy and unexpected twist of fate that shocked everyone who knew me, I not only ended the long and steady relationship, I started a new one almost immediately and we got engaged in just 7 short months. And yet... this path. This was the path that I knew was the road for which I was created.

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

The years passed, time marched on, and life became so busy that I didn't have much time to assess the roads I had or had not taken. We had a wedding, bought a duplex, learned to budget, I got a master's degree, my first teaching job, we ran around with friends, we bought a house, had a baby, went on vacations, served the Lord, fought and made up, had another baby, I started taking pictures, built our forever house, found new interests and hobbies, raised those babies, lost friends, binge-watched a lot of shows, grew established in our jobs, spent time with family, made new friends, buried some loved ones, spent time in nature, went to parent-teacher conferences, rediscovered old friends, fell in love with each other lots more times, cheered for our babies, marked some milestones, fell in love with Jesus in new ways, started a new family business, watched our extended family dynamics change, dated, answered the call to adopt, raised a lot of money, brought home three not-babies, learned to grow as a whole new family, cooked a lot, screen printed and vinyled and printed a wagonload of shirts, vacationed more, taught kids to drive, made changes to our house, found time to watch tv again, and eventually entered the last phase of our careers and the kids-gaining-independence years... And way led on to way.

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back. 

Tomorrow, I turn 42. Although 42 isn't old by any terms but especially not today's, in terms of my life circumstances some things are in twilight at this point. The "at home years" with my kids are just 3-6 more years, probably. My career is in its final third. And so now we come to the sigh. What did Frost mean by the sigh? Was it a contented, happy sigh? I'm grateful for the road I took and the difference it has made is a happy one? Was it a disappointed sigh? There are parts of my path where I wish I had chosen differently and the difference has not been favorable? Is it just that... a sigh? Just a "here we are now, it is what it is" sort of sigh? Was it an exhausted sigh? SO. MUCH. LIVING. So. Much. Road. And I. Am Just. SO. DANG. TIRED???

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

I honestly don't know. Maybe this is the gift of literature and poetry that I try to impress upon my students, the gift of being able to interpret literature the way you want to and to sort of read yourself into the works. As I sit here tonight, on the eve of #42, if I'm being honest, there are whispers sometimes of what might've been. Not on the big things, like my faith or my marriage or my kids or even where we settled and put down roots or sometimes my career... But just on the day to day choices I have made along the way. Where would I be today if I had followed some dreams earlier? Is it ever "too late" to do some things? Have I missed some windows of opportunity by holding to certain roads?

But even as the whispers of what might've been tap on the door on my hard days and flit through my dreams at night, the steady rhythm of unanswered prayers and the full orchestration of the blessing of the broken road is the soundtrack to my life. I know I am right where God wants me to be, beside those He wants me beside, in front of those He wants me in front of, doing the work He wants me to do. And for however long He allows me to walk this less traveled by road I have chosen, I will walk it in faith that He ordained it. And that is what makes all the difference.