Reasonable doubts

My mom worked at  Robert Frost Elementary when I was little. She was a teacher there, I don't know which grade though, I've never asked. While she was teaching, me and KC would hang out with babysitters, one of whom was awful, but the one I remember being with was always really nice. Her name was also Nicki, but I doubt she spelled it the same. I was too small for the correct ordering of letters back then.I always thought it was cool that the name of my mom's school also happened to be the name of a famous poet, so when I go to high school and we studied that kind of thing, he was one of the first I picked up.

If there's one thing I adore about the tiny selection of Robert Frost I've read, it's how good his visuals are. It might just be that I have an overactive imagination, so imagining scenes in books whether they be fiction or poetry is just how I read, but Frost's poems seems to have a sort of vibrancy of color and light that's unique in the minuscule amount of poetry that I've actually cared about reading. Thus he's more interesting to me than many other poets because in my head he is more visually stunning, and visuals are a big part of my world.

I know exactly two poems by Robert Frost.One of them asks a hypothetical question about the way you would want to die, which the narrator answers both ways, and one of them I can only deliver the first and last two lines of. (Yea, I know, dangling participle) This very famous poem I only know three lines of goes like this (feel free to say it with me)

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood
...
I took the road less traveled by,
and that has made all the difference.

There's some stuff in the middle about the look of both paths and some philosophy around decision making, but that's the basic gist of the whole thing, which is probably why it's the only part I remember. It's also surprisingly relevant to my life right now.

The other reason I love Robert Frost is one that I've only just figured out while typing this post. The poems of his I can actually remember are all about choice, and the unknown.I'll have to do more research to see if that's a general theme or not, but I have a feeling it might be. For any of you that have known me for any length of time at all know that those are two things that I struggle with pretty regularly because I'm not particularly good at them, and they happen a lot.Unfortunately I'm also in the middle of one of those stages of life where choices about the unknown come up.

My wood is not yellow because I think yellow leaves are ugly. My woods are typically Springy which I prefer it to Fallish sorts of weather, and usually involve pools which I blame entirely on C.S. Lewis. This one is no exception. It does contain two paths though, and a significant amount of sunny weather, which is good because it means I'm not panicking about it. I do however, have a choice to make.

Besides being based out of Seattle for the next year to continue work at the church I'm at now, I have an entire world of learning and opportunity to explore to the fullest within the limits of  my bank account and working hours. The next few years after that are completely open to me. I can literally do anything I want with them. I could move to Pasadena and work on an assortment of skills and philosophies at Fuller. I could go to England as a nanny. I could fly to the moon and become a florist provided technology has advanced that far. I could move home and find a church job in one of my favorite places on this planet surrounded by the people who have loved and cared about me for most of my life.

And that's where it gets hard. Because all of those options sound good. And as per my thoughts a few posts ago, this isn't something God is just going to give me an answer for. Because as we grow up and start figuring out what this whole life thing is actually about, we start getting more responsibility for managing it on our own, and I think that comes as much from God as from our parents and the state. We've done pretty well with the talent that God gave us, so now he's going to entrust us with more. Rather than saying, Go here. Do this. God just says, Choose.

Before anyone starts worrying that I've gone Calvinist on you, I still believe that all the choices we make are ours, I just think that when you're small, the choices you make are easily distinguishable as God's will, or not God's will. Hitting your brother--probably not, being kind to those around you--probably. But once you reach the point where your life choices are made by you and not your parents there's a certain amount of autonomy that God can work with regardless of the choice you make. Go to California and learn the are of making movies? He can work with that. Stay up north and learn the art of ministering to youth? He can do amazing things with that too.

The thing is, God gives us choice because he gave us brains and passions and talents and gifts and ambitions, and not using them goes against everything he designed us to be. So the choice isn't so much about where I'll live, or what I'll do, but whether I'm going to play it safe, or go all out. Both are good options, both have ups and downs, and both will leave me grieving the loss of the other path. With one, I lose home, and safety and familiarity, at least for a while. With the other, I lose an adventure and a journey that I'll never know the extent of and could very well make all the difference. Which leaves me with one question: Am I brave enough to take the road less traveled or stupid enough not to?