The Road Not Taken

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.

I love this poem by Robert Frost. Even though it was written in 1920 the words are timeless. We are faced with choices every day. Some are small and of almost no consequence. Others are huge and we know that the choice we make will change our lives forever. Whatever we choose will make “all the difference” in what our future will be.

What makes the issue of choice even harder is that sometimes we don’t even get to make the choice. Somebody else makes it for us. As soon our second daughter was born my husband left for a job interview. He literally brought me home from the hospital and went to the airport.

He decided to take the new job in a new profession and move us 2,000 miles away. The day after Christmas the Christmas tree went to the curb and that night, when the movers finished, we started our drive across country. This was such a difficult time. I was filled with joy to have a beautiful family and drowning in sorrow to have to leave home.

Maybe this experience is the reason why Frost’s poem has always spoken to me. He got to make the choice and whatever the outcome he could feel good about that. Sometimes, though, we don’t make a choice. It is made for us. Either way, the choice is a leap of faith. You won’t know until some time in the future if the choice was right. Even then you are really only guessing because you can’t know how the other choice would have turned out. You can’t see what “all the difference” was.

Did my husband make the right choice? We’ll never know, but I do know that, after the deep unhappiness caused by the move, wonderful things happened to us. Our lives blossomed in ways they may not have if he had made a different choice. I was given the gift of photography. We have amazing friends that we would never have if the choice had been different. We went on trips we never would have taken. We met people we never would have met. Do I wish I hadn’t had to live through the pain? Yes. Would I change our life now for what might have been? Never.

Having choices in our lives is a sacred gift. I wish you countless sacred gifts.