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 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 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 this has made all the difference.
– Robert Frost (The Road Not Taken)
I turn 30 this year. It’s a little more of a significant birthday than we emphasize others. But from the sense of you’ve lived one more year and traveled further and experienced more it's fairly significant. I did some retrospective soul-digging this year, as I do every year, and looked at this road that I’ve been on. There were several moments in my life where I could have chosen different road that diverged in the wood as Robert Frost so eloquently phrased.
Lets limit this retrospective to the last 5 years. In 5 years, I’ve held nearly 10 jobs, found a job through Craigslist that I see being a career position, had 2 significant relationships (one of which I discovered was far from right for me, and the second I discovered was exactly who I wanted to spend my life with), married that second woman, bought a home, watched as my first son was brought into the world, supported my wife as she finishes her Elementary Ed. degree, spent long days and sleepless nights working to provide for my family, watched as my son grew right before my eyes, discovered what it felt like to live on the one too few paychecks in a month, found comfort in having a little extra on the paycheck to live off of, learned that I get to experience the ups and downs as we welcome another boy into the world this fall, and learned where to find my happiness and joy each day.
If, 5 years ago you would have told me that I’d experience all these things; I’d have thought you lost your mind. I wasn’t even sure what my tomorrow looked like, let alone had any plans to make any of those experiences happen. In these last 5 years there were obviously so many changes and with each of those changes came a path diverging in the woods. The one moment that sticks out in my mind is when I first met my wife. I remember it plain as day, and she laughs at me every time that I remind her about it. I remember how she had her hair, I remember what she was wearing, I remember most of our conversation, I remember the smells, the sounds, the entire experience. Overall, I have a very vivid recollection of the various important moments in my life. The moments where I had choice, and by making one choice I may have never had another opportunity to choose the other road. Part of that is how my brain works. Call it what you will, all I know is that my memories are almost as vivid as reality.
Meeting my wife was one of the more memorable moments of my life. I saw her, and my heart (as cheesy as it sounds) skipped a beat. She was as beautiful a woman as I had ever seen, and I was dumbfounded that she would even talk to me. I remember blinking and thinking that I was imagining it all, but I opened my eyes and there she was. I probably looked as dumb as I felt.
Yet, meeting her almost didn’t happen. 3 months earlier, I had started in a probationary training period in a customer call center. I was going through the training, and I’ve always been good on the phone talking to people and defusing situations so it came fairly natural to me. I was near the end of my training and I got sick, really sick, missing lengthy periods of time at work sick, and they had a very strict ‘no absence’ policy. When I came back to work, they brought me into the conference room and asked me lots of questions, and it all boiled down to whether my getting sick was a sub-conscious attempt to get out of working. They wanted to know if this job was what I wanted to do or not. Apparently they had seen it before in other employees. They asked me to think about it and have an answer before the end of my training period. So, I thought about it. And that day I filled out an application for a different job at a local lawn & garden supplier. I left the call center that next day. As I walked out my phone rang and it was this lawn & garden supplier calling to set up an interview to be a cashier as retail was my most extensive work experience to that point. I showed up that afternoon and met the head cashier, Carol. She nearly hired me on the spot, but had to get it verified by the store manager. Carol called me back that night and offered me the job. I started training that weekend, and that’s when I met my wife. Day 2 of my training was with her.
I came to a road diverging in a wood, when I was asked if i wanted to work at the call center, and I chose to take the road that most don’t... I left the job on a whim, if you will. I stood there and envisioned what I could see down both and I chose to walk out of a job that was willing to work with me even though I lost time. I left a potential career because that wasn’t where I wanted to be, and as Robert Frost writes: “...and this has made all the difference.”
There’s no way that I could have known what was waiting for me down the road that I chose, but somehow there was a greater story being written for my life, that I would come to discover was exactly what I needed. I know that this isn’t quite what Robert Frost is getting at in his poem, but I believe that we are always given a choice in how our story is written. Our Father above doesn’t have our story written in stone and He’s just sitting up there reading it and watching us act it out. I believe that He is actively writing down our story as we are living it. He knows every situation and every outcome; He is the Beginning and the End, He is without time and is ever-present which is how He can be writing our story with us. I think He wove in this diverging path for me so that I could eventually see the beauty of what He had in store. I believe that He created my wife to be my match. The Yin to my Yang. The peanut butter to my jelly. The french to my toast. …. but even though He created us to become one, He had to bring me to her in a way that would resonate with both of our souls.
For me, I needed to find her when I did because I was longing to pursue someone and to chase after her heart in only the way that I know how. I needed to find her and I wanted to show her that she was a beautiful creature, and perfect exactly the way she was. That is how I envisioned meeting my wife.
For Keely, my wife, I think that she needed to see how desperately I chased her. She wanted to know that I saw her for her and that I would pursue her through every storm. I believe that she needed to feel what being pursued felt like. She needed to feel precious, to feel a man look at her and see pure beauty.
Our roads crossed and I never looked back. She is what has made all the difference to me. All of the last 5 years has happened because of one choice that I made. Because of one road I walked, I found my happiness. My happiness is my family. A family joined when two roads merged in a yellow wood.
