It wasn’t too long ago Katie and I were taking a sunset stroll when we came across a split in the sidewalk. One path was paved and would safely lead us home. The other path was unpaved, overgrown and headed deep into the sunset away from civilization.
I looked at Katie and motioned with my head and a smile towards the dirt path…. “This was a no-brainer” I thought to myself. But as I tromped toward the brush I felt a strange dead weight attached to my hand… I looked back to see my wife communicating very clearly with her facial expression and her posture. “Eww, there could be bugs that way! Besides, it’s getting dark; we should go home.”
I looked at her in my best confused face and asked her with as much craftiness as I could muster in order to get my way “Is this coming from the fearless woman who is about to embark on a world journey with nothing but a backpack?” but my flawless argument had been shot down as she pulled her hand away, pointed at the darken bush and said “That’s totally different. There is no way I’m going in there. Let’s go home.” Needless to say we to the paved road back to our house.
That night we walked home and I have to admit that I was disappointed. But little did I know that in a few short weeks from that moment my wife would be leading a herd of people off a bus and into the dark woods on an unbeaten path to set up camp with nothing but a tarp and a few logs to start a fire. That night in the woods was a success due to my wife.
Sometimes people surprise you… Sometimes we surprise ourselves… Sometimes we look back at life and we won’t recognize ourselves… Sometimes the dirt road today is the path we pave for tomorrow…
When given the right space… the right time…. And the right encouragement… I believe that we will be shocked at what we find in ourselves and in other people. The path that we might have shied away from in the past might be same one we lead others down in the future.
I believe that we all have paths that we swear to God we will never go down. There are people we don’t want to talk to, places in our hearts we don’t want to go, conversations we don’t want to have and lifestyles that we refuse to embrace. We think that if we go down that path that we will be destroyed when in reality; God wants to walk with us down that path to lead us to life.
If God is leading you down a path that you are afraid to take I beg you to trust him. The pain that you may experience now may be the life that he wants you to lead others too later.
