This week was a good one. I only walked 3 times by choice. Monday’s weather was not cooperative at all. Wednesday I walked, Thursday we had a football game and Friday I had a headache. Saturday I did walk again and managed to tie the fastest mph so far on the route at the Brush Secondary Campus. All in all a great week. I have been frustrated because while I am doing all the right things and seeing and, more importantly, feeling differences in my body, the scale is not sliding down as much as I would like. It is a fickle creature for sure. I expressed my frustrations to my oldest son, Benjamin, and also my sister, Carly. They both said that I am doing what needs done and sticking to the routine and continuing to build discipline around that routine. I am and I understand that on some level but it is very difficult to keep plugging when the scale seems to be the biggest demotivator of all. But I continue to have faith in the process and know that the results will show on the scale eventually. The way I feel has kept me excited as I feel changes all over.
I got to have lunch with a very dear friend this week. Carolyn edits this blog for me. She is severely underpaid, by the way. She asked me if I had my blog topic this week and I told her I did and then shared the basic ideas with her. She reminded me of a poem by Robert Frost that fit perfectly with my topic. I will attempt to unpack my thoughts and fold in the things that came to mind from that poem. I am grateful that Carolyn brought this up because it did add another layer to what I was already thinking.
I was walking Wednesday night at the Secondary Campus. I was walking North and happened to see two bicyclists riding on Mill Street. One heading East and one heading West. In a really well-timed crossing of paths, they met and passed by each other almost directly in front of me. For a second, the two riders became one. They were both wearing black shirts and it almost appeared as though it was one rider who was mirrored the whole time I watched. They passed each other and somehow it brought a vivid memory of a certain type of book I had when I was a child. I don’t think it would shock anyone to hear that I have always read books. I am reading three right now. (Yeah, I’m a mess but that’s a whole other story). Anyway, somehow this caused me to start thinking about the books you could read that let the reader choose the ending. I loved those books . . . and the agonizing over which ending I should choose. It always felt like I was going to make the wrong choice. Often I did, meaning I didn’t like the ending at all. And, even more so, most of the time I actually liked the ending but I couldn’t NOT go back to see what the other ending was. Was it a better ending? More glamorous? More exciting? More sad or happy? I just HAD to know! I blame my addictive personality for this. So, because I could, I would go back and read the other ending.
We have told our boys their whole lives that it is never too late to make a different decision. In our lives we make a decision and choose our path but, for one reason or another, we are not as happy in that decision as we thought we would be; or it isn’t as productive as we thought it would be; or it is having ill-effects on our mental, spiritual, or physical health. Many times, instead of evaluating our situation, figuring out what needs to change, and making a different decision, we stay stuck there. We stay firmly planted, and maybe even stubbornly planted, in that choice and refuse to do what is necessary to change the circumstances in which we find ourselves.
I am grateful that Carolyn mentioned the poem by Frost, “The Road Not Taken,” because it tied in so well to what I was already thinking. Many times we come to a subtle, not easily detected crossroads . . . a shadowed fork of destiny, if you will. It’s a divergence of paths that many times are as different as night and day. One way may lead down a well-trodden route that is free and clear of debris where the steps of countless travelers have pressed the earth into certainty. Often it is the easy and obvious choice. The other way is the one that has waited in silence for your steps to forge new beginnings, its way obscured by time and stillness. Sometimes all that is evident to indicate there IS a second, less traveled path is the faint whisper of possibility beneath the undergrowth . . . a quiet invitation only the attentive heart can hear . . . waiting for someone to listen and take the first, courageous step. It is often discovered by a barely noticeable shift of light through the trees or a feeling that the air itself is holding its breath waiting for you to notice. Sometimes it is marked by the soft impression of where the grass bends differently, as if remembering the few who once dared to pass. Sometimes, it is a quiet feeling that something more lies beyond the familiar . . . an intuition rather than a sign.
I am here to tell you that those books set me up to know that sometimes we CAN find an alternate ending. We can choose a different path. And I did just that. And as Frost said in his poem, “I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”
I was moving along in a lifestyle that would likely end my life before it should. It was easy, comfortable, and well traveled by MILLIONS. Just look at the statistics on obesity and on heart disease and on diabetes in our country alone and you will find staggering numbers that expose how many people who, just like me, hadn’t come to the conclusion that their lives are worth fighting and worth changing habits for. It is a well-traveled road paved with Big Macs, Snickers bars, and inactivity that will eventually lead to pain, disease, and early demise.
I realized in thinking about all these paths, decisions, and choices I had to pause and let the quiet press in around me. The familiar path continues to call softly, offering safety, predictability, and the comfort of knowing how the story ends, even if it isn’t happy. But I have to let my gaze linger on the other way, half-hidden beneath brush and shadow, where the world feels raw and unpromised. Sometimes, there is a feeling in my heart, a tightening in my chest that stirs not from fear, but from recognition and the sense that growth rarely waits on the paved and certain road.
My encouragement to you this week is to take a minute, breathe in, slow and deliberate, and then step forward. Not toward ease, but toward possibility. Hear that first branch snap beneath your foot. Feel the air thick with the scent of earth and change. Behind you, the well-worn path remains untouched, still certain and kind. Ahead, the unknown opens like a blank page, and for the first time, you can feel the quiet thrill of becoming the one who writes what happens next.
In the days that followed my decision to change my ending, each step I take down that unfamiliar trail brings a shift. I feel as though my lungs fill deeper. My heart beats steadier. The fog that once clung to my thoughts is beginning to lift. The solitude and struggle that first felt heavy now steadies me, teaching me to listen . . . to my body, my breath, my life. The decision I have made to walk a different, often abandoned path toward better health was not the easier one, but it was the one that asked me to show up fully, to choose my better health each morning. And in choosing it, I’ve discovered that sometimes the hardest paths, the ones less traveled, are the ones that heal us most.
Losing Lacy 