“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood.” Most of us are familiar with that line from the poem The Road Not Taken, by Robert Frost. What a wistful, beautiful, but almost painful poem that is! It’s about choices, big and small, and how they affect our future. It’s about where we’ll eventually find ourselves in time, and how we never really get the same choice twice, because paths just keep going, and splitting, and going again. Away and away....
But sometimes the choice isn’t which path to walk, but whether we’re going to walk at all.
I have days where I wake up with my hiking boots already on - I’m ready to hit the trail, climb the rocks, and leap the scary potholes in a single bound. Those days are awesome! But those days, for some reason, are also few and far between for me. Mostly I find I have to fight myself and my reluctance to walk anywhere, my fear of failure and of being mediocre, and the often unexplained heaviness that is waiting just outside my peripheral vision before I can even think of getting my hiking boots out of the closet, and by that time I’ve already lost half of my Umph.
So instead of it being about which road to follow, it ends up being about making the basic choice to either let today slide away into ambiguity again, or to tap into a Strength that is beyond me and just focus on putting one foot in front of the other.
Have you found yourself there too? It’s not fun. It sometimes makes me want to question whether what’s at the end of the road is worth the fight just to walk. But you know what?
It’s worth it.
It’s worth it on the days when you feel like you have winged feet and it’s easy to visualize the End Zone. But it’s also worth it when you can’t see through the fog and you just have to go on the faith that this road really does lead somewhere. It’s worth it when the only thing that drives you is the hope that what’s up ahead is what God created you for. It’s worth it when you’re tired and all you can hear is the continuous tromp-tromp-tromp of your shoes on the road, on and on and on. It’s worth it when you get through the bracken and you catch a much-needed and refreshing glimpse of the reward ahead.
Don’t lose heart. Please don’t give up. Make the choice to keep walking. And look for the little beautiful things along the way, even if you haven’t reached the fulfillment of your goal yet. And if all you have the strength for sometimes is to keep walking with your head down against the wind, it’s ok. Even if right now it’s lonely, or difficult, or painful, or discouraging, or tiring, it’s worth it.
God is molding you into a beautiful person, and every time you make the choice to walk the road, you get that much closer to the goal-line, which, really, is about becoming who He made you to be. And it’s going to be beautiful. It’s going to be so much more fulfilling than you thought possible.
It’s worth it.
But sometimes the choice isn’t which path to walk, but whether we’re going to walk at all.
I have days where I wake up with my hiking boots already on - I’m ready to hit the trail, climb the rocks, and leap the scary potholes in a single bound. Those days are awesome! But those days, for some reason, are also few and far between for me. Mostly I find I have to fight myself and my reluctance to walk anywhere, my fear of failure and of being mediocre, and the often unexplained heaviness that is waiting just outside my peripheral vision before I can even think of getting my hiking boots out of the closet, and by that time I’ve already lost half of my Umph.
So instead of it being about which road to follow, it ends up being about making the basic choice to either let today slide away into ambiguity again, or to tap into a Strength that is beyond me and just focus on putting one foot in front of the other.
Have you found yourself there too? It’s not fun. It sometimes makes me want to question whether what’s at the end of the road is worth the fight just to walk. But you know what?
It’s worth it.
It’s worth it on the days when you feel like you have winged feet and it’s easy to visualize the End Zone. But it’s also worth it when you can’t see through the fog and you just have to go on the faith that this road really does lead somewhere. It’s worth it when the only thing that drives you is the hope that what’s up ahead is what God created you for. It’s worth it when you’re tired and all you can hear is the continuous tromp-tromp-tromp of your shoes on the road, on and on and on. It’s worth it when you get through the bracken and you catch a much-needed and refreshing glimpse of the reward ahead.
Don’t lose heart. Please don’t give up. Make the choice to keep walking. And look for the little beautiful things along the way, even if you haven’t reached the fulfillment of your goal yet. And if all you have the strength for sometimes is to keep walking with your head down against the wind, it’s ok. Even if right now it’s lonely, or difficult, or painful, or discouraging, or tiring, it’s worth it.
God is molding you into a beautiful person, and every time you make the choice to walk the road, you get that much closer to the goal-line, which, really, is about becoming who He made you to be. And it’s going to be beautiful. It’s going to be so much more fulfilling than you thought possible.
It’s worth it.
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