The Road Not Taken

I've always admired people who knew exactly what they wanted; to have a resolute decision and know that it is right- that is something that, with me, has always been easier said than done.
In the pool tonight after dinner, we met a man who told us that it took him thirty years to know what he wanted: to join the Coast Guard. As he tells it, he says he was on a boat about 35 miles off of the Florida shore, and the boat began to sink. Another boat nearby saved him and his fellow passengers, and although it wasn't the most heroic rescue, he thanked God for it. And it led to an epiphany. He wanted to save people from drowning, as he might have had not the other boat been nearby.
Excited to fulfill his dream, he went to enlist in the Coast Guard. Apparently to be in the Coast Guard, one must enlist before his or her 27th birthday. He was thirty.

Stories like these tend to fire up the rusty, semi-functional gears in my brain and make me evaluate what I want in life. After all, I need to know what I'm going to do, or else it might be too late. The hard part, though, is that life does not work this way- at least not for most people. We may plan our entire lives, but end up on a completely different path than we ever expected. We may be called to do something extraordinary- or quite ordinary- when we never expected to be called at all. As I've been reading in McCullough's excellent book, John Adams, sometimes a common, unsuspecting man ends up forging a new nation.
The cure for this unpredictable life we lead is simple: trust in God to lead you in the direction you are meant for. I've learned firsthand that the worst mistake we can make is to think that we have it all figured out- indeed, that we control it, that mysterious stuff that constitutes our future.

The poem "The Road Not Taken" comes to mind (see below). It hails the peculiarities of life that render us traveling down roads we never could have asked for or imagined.

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth; 5

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same, 10

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back. 15

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. 20

Dream- know what you want to do. But always remember who is in control.