Nobody is better at speaking truth in love than my wife, Angie. She’s a skilled therapist, but goes easy on me as I try to swim to the depths with her when it comes to the heart.
The other day, she gave me a children’s book called What the Road Said. The picture above is one of the pages. And it’s never been more relevant to me than right now.
The last two years have been filled with all kinds of tough choices for all of us.
For me, I chose to step down from my role as the founding Pastor at Grace Hills Church (a choice my wife and co-founding Pastor) made with me.
Then I chose to get my real estate license.
I chose to shut down a few creative business ideas and experiment with a couple of others.
More recently, I accepted a role with a phenomenal nonprofit, Help One Now. They’re ending extreme poverty in developing nations one family at a time. The problem is, as much as I love the mission, I wasn’t a fit for the role they needed.
So I made the tough choice to step away after only a month of serving.
Choices are hard.
Sometimes we make bad choices. We choose to do selfish, sinful things. Or we make choices that are destructive to ourselves and those we love.
Sometimes our choices might seem right, but they’re poorly timed, or we didn’t have the information we needed, or we changed on the inside after setting our sights in one direction or another.
All I know is that after 44 years of life, these words are true…
Sometimes we go the wrong way on our way to the right way.
I’m a classic all-or-nothing thinker, which works against me in many situations. But when it comes to decision-making, it means I tend to take off running at full-speed in whichever direction I’ve chosen, and I rarely look back, even when I should.
I once heard John Maxwell say that sometimes we overestimate the importance of decision-making and underestimate the importance of decision-managing. To put it another way, sometimes what we do once the decision is made is far more crucial than the decision itself.
I have yet to meet anyone who is batting a thousand when it comes to making right decisions. But I know a lot of people who are healthy, happy, and making a positive dent in a pretty negative world because they kept on seeking the right way.
Remember that your purpose in life and the job you work aren’t exactly the same thing.
If you’ve found yourself in the midst of a scary, transitional season, keep walking forward in the direction of your purpose.
Of healthy.
Of holy.
Of happy.
And let the road hug you as you go.
