The Road Taken

May 18^th was our last day of school, and of all the things that we could do, I had my 7^th and 8^th grade English students recite a poem. (They had plenty of advance notice, by the way. About a month prior, they had each chosen a poem to memorize from the book 101 Great American Poems.) I don’t know that I have always appreciated poetry, but I have grown to love it. Writing poems is an art. The words in a poem must be carefully chosen, hand-picked to fit the mood, the message, and often the rhyme and rhythm of the poem. Two of my students chose to memorize Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken,” a poem I myself memorized for my freshman speech class in college and loved. Read these words. If you’re in a spot where you can read out loud, I suggest you do so.

The Road Not Taken

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;

 

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,

 

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.

 

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.

 

There’s something about this poem that stirs the senses – it’s nostalgic, and Frost’s metaphor of two paths in the woods aptly reminds us that life is full of such choices. In choosing one path in life, we are saying no to another path. There is a sadness, a feeling of loss in the lines “Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back.” We feel that, don’t we? One of the most vivid memories I have in this regard was boarding an airplane to leave Germany, the country I had grown up in, where my family and friends resided, to fly to the States for college. I knew that though I would visit Germany again, it would probably never be home again. And I cried. Yes, our ways lead on to other ways, and the life that we lived we can live no longer. Time moves on. We can’t go back and experience the other road, see that scenery and live that life. Frost understands this, and tells it “with a sigh” years later as he reminisces. Yet he ends this poem on a hopeful note. The road he chose has made all the difference; it has brought him to where he is now. The same is true for us. Our choices have led us to where we are. I am living here in Chattanooga, married to my sweet husband, and a member of Grace Baptist Church in part because I boarded that plane and said goodbye to my home.

What I found fascinating this time as my students recited the poem was its title. Interestingly, Frost does not call this poem “The Road Taken;” he calls it “The Road Not Taken.” Why does his title focus on the road he didn’t take? Is he regretting it? Is he wondering how his life would have been different had he taken the other road? I don’t know, and I don’t know if you may regret some of the roads you have taken in your life. But here’s where I found such comfort as I pondered this. While I stand at these crossroads in life and make choices to say “yes” to one path and “no” to another, I am at the same time being led by a sovereign God. It is true; this is a mystery: the sovereignty of God and the free will of man. But just because it is a mystery makes it no less true. Proverbs 16:9 tells us, “The mind of a person plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps.”  Sister in Christ, you don’t need to look back and wonder about the road not taken. You are where your sovereign and loving God has led you. Serve him in this place. And as you look back to the place where “two roads diverged” in your yellow wood, thank God that He was there leading you to the path that “made all the difference” and live here, in this place, for His glory. 

--Amy O'Rear