The road not taken

Both Carl and I sometimes wonder if we are where we are supposed to be.  Perhaps we got off track somewhere and are far off course from what God intended for our lives.

Thinking about that can give me a headache.

God doesn't push us around a board like a chess piece, or, as I prefer, a Parcheesi token.  While it is true that many choices affect our lives forever, both good and not so good, surely God can redeem whatever unfortunate situation in which we inadvertently, or advertently (is that a word?), find ourselves.

Perhaps we second guess everything into a corner.  Analyzing everything forty ways to Sunday, trying to figure out where, or if, we got it wrong.  Were we intended for something greater?  Is this what I wanted to be when I grew up?

Hindsight being what it is, it is only when we look backward that we can see how God has used our choices, whether they were His "optimum" plan or something far less spiritually motivated, to shape us, sometimes break us, but ultimately to draw us to Himself through His love and to use us to further His purposes.  Rather humbling, really.

It would be nice to clearly see forward instead of backward, but as St. Paul said, we now see through a glass darkly, and know only in part.  But then [oh, great day!] we shall know even as we are known.  1 Corinthians 13:12

So Carl and I will press on in faith, by the grace of God, down the road we are traveling, trusting, like Mr. Frost, that we've chosen well, and that when it is time to turn another direction, that God will make us aware of it.

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; 

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, 

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. 

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.  

- Robert Frost