fork

one of the bands i hold close to my heart has some of the most beautifully written and incredible sounding music that sometimes i get choked up just reading the lyrics or closing my eyes and listening to the songs.

in a song called 'wires', sleeping at last writes:

'but all desperation
leads to a fork in the road -
we live for understanding
or for control.'

i'm so young - but my life is already rich with history. i look at my little brother who is rapidly approaching his eighteenth birthday and i think of how much i didn't know when i was eighteen. and i can't wait until i'm twenty-five and can look back on all that i didn't know when i was twenty-one, and so forth and so on.

when i think back to all of the just straight up sucky things that have happened over the past few years... including being completely burned by respected church leadership, dumped for God knows what, and ditched for spicier people; i know that in all of those situations i had a choice to go left or go right.

one direction had roadblocks of bitterness, an inability to see what i could have done wrong, unforgiveness, self-righteousness, entitlement issues, pain, etc..

the other had all of the opposites plus infinite joy... a knowledge that i do not deserve anything, that i had made mistakes in each situation, forgiveness, etc..

obviously i'm not going to sit here and lie to you by saying that i chose the latter wholeheartedly and haven't struggled since. of course there have been days where i've wandered down the wrong direction, but generally speaking - i think i wake up with a smile and go to bed with one maybe even bigger due to the fact that i make a conscious decision each day to go the direction that included the infinite joy.

for so long i wanted to understand why everything was happening or why it happened. but i look at my life now and how incredible God has made my story and i am no longer curious. he has answered my curiosities with every good thing. with joy, with family and friends, with provision, with peace, and with excitement.

oh true happiness, how i love thee.