Two roads diverged in a wood and I – I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference. – Robert Frost
This poem has always been a personal favorite, celebrating the joys and adventures of traveling a road that few people choose to travel. It is something our family has adopted as a way of life. Swimming against the current, if you will. Doing the unexpected or the counter-culture option when given a choice.
This year, I’ve discovered another and deeper meaning in this idea. When Dave’s brain tumor was found in May and diagnosed to be the most aggressive and lethal brain cancer there is, everything in our life changed. Plans for a long future together vanished. Projects, business and personal, were put on indefinite hold. The value of time together was exponentially multiplied. So was the love we felt for one another magnified.
Glioblastoma is a tragic turn of events, and over the past seven months our journey has been filled with twists and turns, lows that I didn’t know were possible, and sacred moments together where we’ve seen a glimpse of God’s mercy in the midst of indescribable suffering, even great joy in the midst of profound sorrow. We are still taking things day by day, cherishing each day in turn, enduring the harder days together and at the same time, working to put our affairs in order so that when the much harder part of this road comes, as we know it will, we can face it without regrets.
Sometimes, the road we travel is not one we would have ever chosen for ourselves or ever wished on those we love. We just put one foot in front of the other. Sometimes God chooses the road, placing us on a hard path that He alone knows we need to travel in order to reach the destination He hopes for each of us as His children through the mercy and merits of Jesus Christ.
For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, says the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I intend, and prosper in the thing for which I sent it.
Isaiah 55:8-13 (italics added)
For you shall go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall break forth into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress; instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle; and it shall be to the LORD for a memorial, for an everlasting sign which shall not be cut off.
Isaiah 55:12-13
We are learning that this road less traveled is a road HOME, where one day we will rest, to go no more out. It will be an end to the suffering and tears of mortality, a continuation of joy, and a beginning of endless peace and praise. We are also learning that God journeys with us on the road – including the twists and turns, bumps and stops. If He is with us, who can be against us? Nothing can separate us from Love.