Being Robert Frost in an eight lane world.

Two roads diverged in the wood, and I - I took the one less traveled by.

My son was looking through a basket I keep on our entry table, you know the one. It’s where I stash the small things that make their way through the door and need a quick place to land. Mine is shaped like a bunny, The Bunny Basket. One thing this basket holds is keys, any keys I see laying around or use occasionally. As he was looking through, he found an old key ring I haven’t used a in good while. He brought it to me and started asking what each key was for, and he landed on the biggest one and when he held it up I wasn’t planning for it but my heart squeezed tight and emotions hit me like the heavy breeze of a summer storm rolling in. It was the front door key to our old house.

I never said anything to him because he feels things deeply (the apple doesn’t fall far from me to him) but I've been pondering why after three years there is still such a fissure in my soul that resurfaces now and then. I see some people make big life changes and it’s like they don’t miss a beat. They happily throw their things in boxes and away they go, setting up home, buying new furniture , hang some pictures on the wall and life moves on. I know it’s not right to envy, but that one is tough to combat. As much as I want to be that person, I've learned it will never be me. There is an invisible golden thread that runs straight through my life’s moments and attaches right to the center of the heart. Whenever those little moments are called to mind that thread pulls. It pulls hard.

So you’re probably asking, then why make the move? Why make changes? And I only have one response. The road less traveled by is sometimes the right road. Choosing the right, but uncomfortable thing, is still the right thing. Robert Frost couldn’t have penned a better word for our generation. The temptation to make it about me, me, me and to do what everyone else is doing - to make it only always easy for ourselves, to take the wide road is a toxic danger. In my full transparency, there are times when I am so frustrated that it’s not just easy. I say those words out loud when I’m digging through a cardboard box “closet” for something to wear, when I just want my favorite coffee shop, when people I love and long for are hours away.

I’m not saying it’s all bad, all the time. There are people I love right here and now, I love my charming community. I love the County Fair Parade and how there’s not much else to do on a Friday night than watch Little League. How we all know the best things at our few restaurants and we’re kind of all in our little food desert together. I love our historical library and our local flower shop. I love knowing no matter where I go, I’ll see someone I know. There is so much comfort in that. It’s special, and when I’m away my heart feels far from home. I’m just saying - and my locals, please I beg you not to misunderstand this statement - there aren’t a lot of travelers taking the Arkadelphia road. It’s not the shiny thing. The grand opportunity. It is literally the road less traveled by. But echoing the timely words of Robert Frost…that has made all the difference.

There are people whose lives have been completely changed and rearranged as a ripple effect of the choice we made to take this road. The list is long and growing of differences made. I won’t share all the details of the lives and where they were in contrast to where they are now, but if I could I could write a book only on the last three years. Differences made that would have never been made if we had said no to the smaller road and stayed in our cultural euphoric bubble. None of that is to our personal credit, except to say this, and I say it not to me because I already took my road. I say it to you.

Protect yourself from your self. Self will lead you down the comfortable familiar road every single time. It will take everything it can and never learn to give. The world will miss the impact you would have made if you’re not careful to weigh what really is the right, not the easy, path that you are personally meant to follow. Forget instagramability (that’s my made up word and I use it often). It’s a deceiver. Life isn’t really a grid. It’s a winding, sun lit, tree-canopied dirt path with the grass growing in the middle. You know the one, you don’t take it often but when you do, it takes your breath away.

Do that one.