My English class in elementary school did a poetry project one year. We were tasked with finding poems we liked and instructed to write them on a t-shirt with puff paint. Easy and fun…I was totally stoked about it! This was pre-google, pre-Wikipedia, so in order to find what you were looking for, you had to put your nose in a book and search. And boy, were my eyes opened to a beautiful world. Shel Silverstein, E.E. Cummings, Edgar Allan Poe, William Shakespeare, and my favorite, Robert Frost, were just some of the incredible poets I found. Each one had a different style, a different tone, a different way of making you look at the world and all its contents, and allowed you to decide what it meant to you.

Robert Frost has one particular poem that has always stayed with me, “The Road Not Taken.” The lines weave this picture of some woods, where there are two roads and the author is trying to figure out which way to go. The roads both look similar. He can’t see what’s at the end of either one. But, he has to choose.

I can’t help but think of my own life and my own choices when I read about “The Road Not Taken.” I’ve had opportunities where I’ve had to choose which one to walk out. Without knowing what the outcome will be, without seeing what the journey will be like. There have been many instances where I’ve had to follow my own path and literally create my own way. And in each one of those instances, God never left my side. Because at the center of it all, He’s the one guiding my feet. He keeps me steady. He helps me choose the right path.

Even so, I can say from experience that it’s not always been easy, even when God was holding my hand throughout the journey. Not knowing what was at the other end, or trying to decide which way to go when the two look exactly alike. The last stanza of the poem, though, for me, says it all.

These two roads, which the author is deciding between…he picks the one less traveled. And Frost tells us that it has made all the difference.

So in a world where it’s easier to swim downstream, instead of going up. In a time where mediocrity, fitting in and being just another one in the crowd is the norm, maybe today is the day you take the road less traveled…

I hear it can makes all the difference.

“You provide a broad path for my feet, so that my ankles do not give way.”- 2 Samuel 22:37