I remember the first time I read Robert Frost’s poem, The Road Not Taken. I was still in high school, and my English teacher was one of those literary types who thought the sun rose and set in people like Dickens and Shakespeare. Me, I didn’t understand any of it. That poem especially.
She went on and on about the beauty of Frost’s words, of how those two roads diverged in a yellow wood and he chose the one less traveled. What magic! she said. Oh, what courage!
But I didn’t think she had it quite right. I didn’t see much in the way of magic and courage at all. To me, it sounded an awful lot like Mr. Robert Frost decided it would be a good thing if he took that road until he found out where it led. To me, that poem meant that even though he kept walking, something inside him always wondered what that other road was all about.
I can understand. I’m the same way. I spend a lot of time wondering if some of the choices I’ve made through the years were the right ones. How would my life have turned out differently if I would have done this instead of that? Or if I would have not done this instead of that?
It very nearly drove me crazy.
But then I happened upon an idea that helped to put all of that wasted thinking in perspective. I wrote about it today over at katdish’s blog, and I invite you there to read it. Hopefully, like me you’ll find that the decisions you’ve made in life, the ones who’ve led you right where you are, are the means by which God has brought you to exactly where you need to be.
