If there is one thing to answer the person asking how I am or how have I been doing lately, the answer is: "I'm on DETOUR!". The areas in my life where I assumingly took total control of before are now suddenly leading to roads I never thought I would be travelling. The journey I never dreamed of trekking but it's a sweet and exciting ride. This started last year, when I surrendered my life to God and accepted Jesus as my personal Lord and savior.
Having a background in engineering, I totally agree in the premise that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. It is in this logical thinking my life was patterned after. Taking control is very easy because a simple logic of "if-then-else" condition (if-"you do this" then-"you get this" else-"otherwise") makes a great pattern to achieve whatever I want.
However, in God's economy, the shortest distance between two points is a not a straight path (by the way how God took the Israelites out of Egypt to the promised land in the book of Exodus). When I came to know about this concept, I learned more about God's character and how obedience, patience and trust play an important role.
God paved my way to detour....
A detour in my faith - from a solid Roman Catholic to a born-again Christian
A detour in my marriage - from being a proud, bossy and control-freak wife to a submissive wife
A detour in parenting - from sending our daughters to conventional school, we now homeschool them
A detour in my career - from a workaholic corporate employee for almost 2 decades to entrepreneur and household manager
A detour in life's view - from defining success as having a stable high paying job, a complete family, having children, living in your own house, driving your own car to redefining success in life if we live each day becoming more Christ-like and participating in God's kingdom building.
I remember my favorite poem from Robert Frost. I love to read this whenever I make major life-changing decisions before.
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.
After I surrendered my life to Christ, I'm rooting myself with the scripture and the poem above could be related from this verse: "Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it." (Matthew 7:13-14)
The road not taken is definitely not appealing because when you let go and let God, he'll reform us into the likeness of his son, Jesus. The transformation process is very difficult for us humans. This difficulty will deceive us into thinking we have reason for wandering off God's path and our attitudes and habits have places us on the dangerous side-paths of the kingdom of "self".
All my life I have been living out of God's path, in the jungle of rebellion, lust, autonomy, greed, foolishness and self-focus. It's only through his restoring grace I was able to be on his track. Indeed, our savior guide, Jesus, doesn't leave us to our wandering. A good shepherd, he relentlessly seeks us and places us back on his designed path and I am deeply thankful and honored to be placed on detour because my life now is a far cry from from where it was before.
