The Melting of Roads

The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost is probably one of the most quoted and well known poems in all American Poetry. Most of us can echo the emotions of Frost, especially in the first and last stanzas.

"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;"

We know the feeling of looking at 2 (or more) paths and being sorry that we could not travel both. Or maybe we are intimidated by all the options in front of us. In either case we know a decision must be made. And even if we do not choose, we are walking the same path we were on when we approached the crossroads It is usually in these moments that we look forward to the last stanza. 

"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 know that for me, I want to be able to look back in those moments of choice and sigh as I tell share my memories. The memories of taking the road that has made all the difference. 

As much as we long for these moments, my experience has been that life is not usually like this. Not in the way it begins or in those moments of reflection. That is not to say that our life is not idyllic. I have actually found the opposite to be true. But rather than the picturesque setting of a Thomas Kinkade painting, I find the paths of my life to be more similar to those found in Wackyland from Tiny Toons. There seems to be a consistent strand of God's faithfulness in my life but the paths are not set up as Frost describes. Rather I often feel like I am running through Minos' labyrinth with the Minotaur of life chasing after me. But that is not fully true, that is just my perception and what I feel. It feels like I am in a labyrinth running in circles with all that is contained in life and death always at my heels. Those moments fade.

Recently I have realized that  my road..... my roads..... our roads melt together. One season blending and building into another. Callings and desires from God colliding into glorious explosions of hope, excitement, and weighted glory. Sometimes these explosions are brief and just what we need to see past our cynicism, woundings , and hesitation. We may think there are just paths in front of us but God is more imaginative and too alive to just present paths to us. No we are being weaved together. Called and united for something much grander than choosing this or that, left or right.

Honestly as I have experienced this over the past few weeks, I have found it disorienting. But in this process I have been reinvigorated. It was as if there were another new frontier to explore. A new plan to be carved out and a new dream to chase. But as Christians we know that everything seems to carry a weight, a heaviness with it (at least until the redemption and reconciliation of all things). Our life changes and shifts; our excitement in the new is bound up in goodbyes, unsettlings, and new sacrifices. But together we can carry these things.

So as I venture forward into what seems to be a calling that was tucked behind layers of life and experiences, one that has been a part of me since birth yet is just now being revealed,  I will do so with both excitement and hesitation. Not hesitation out of a lack of faith or trust. Rather this hesitation is bound up in living this season fully even as the next season presses in upon it. This hesitation is wrapped up with the changes that seem to be coming and the ways that each of us affect one another. But together we can carry these things.