The Road Not Taken

This Saturday night a highly anticipated match-up will take place in the college basketball ranks. The University of Memphis Tigers (ranked no. 1 in the nation, but affectionately known to this blogger as "Tiger High") will do battle with my beloved University of Tennessee Volunteers (ranked no. 2 in the land, the highest ranking ever acheived by a UT team.) The game will be played in Memphis and broadcast in primetime on ESPN. As of today, tickets to the game were being sold at Stubhub.com for (gulp) $10,000 a piece- and that is not a typo.

I was supposed to be there.

Last August, my friend, Jason Sharp, and I made a plan. I even wrote about it in one of my earliest blogs. It was dubbed the Memphis Man Trip. We had a plan to make a pilgrimage to Graceland this weekend topped off with a little B-Ball and barbeque. We were going to buy tickets to this game way back before the season ever started and before anyone had an inkling that the "perfect storm" of a match-up would fall into place. We could have paid regular price and probably have gotten really good seats. But before the plan could begin to take shape, Jason accepted a job in Minneapolis, MN in October and moved his family up at Christmas. When I accepted a new job after the first of the year and knew I could not (and should not) shuffle off to Memphis this soon, the Memphis Man Trip was completely scrapped.

Now I wish we had at least bought the tickets. Ten grand would have bought a mighty big plasma HDTV and enough ribs to feed every man in my church while we watched the game... I in my new, leather recliner no less!

But the title of this blog is NOT in reference to Interstate 40, the road not taken to Memphis. It is in reference to the road not taken by Jason and me.

In 1915, Robert Frost wrote one of his most beloved poems regarding the two roads that diverged in a yellow wood. He finished it by saying that he took the road less traveled and that made all the difference.

Jason is very good at what he does and could have stayed here and continued to prosper. But he decided moving to sub-arctic temperatures, over one thousand miles away from what had become a very comfortable home for him and his family was what God was calling him to do. Most guys would have been content to stay, but Jason wanted to stretch himself, challenge himself and he (and his family) made the decision to take the road less traveled. Talking to him now, it is clear to me that it did make the difference. I miss him, but he is clearly following God.

I won't rehash a story I have already blogged about ad nauseum, but I was serving among some of the finest people I have ever known. I was in a comfortable church in a comfortable job making a comfortable living... okay so the living was a wee bit uncomfortable, but I digress. It would have been easy to keep on keeping on in that situation, but God would not give me peace about that. Now, nearly one month into my transition, it is becoming clear to me that God does, in deed, have a plan and He wanted me to be a part of it.

So Saturday night I am going to plant myself in front of my TV, hopefully with some good food, family, and friends and watch the big game. At some point, no doubt, I will think about what it might have been like to see that Tennessee victory in person, but then I will remember the two roads that diverged. I will think about the one less traveled (the narrow gate) and I will be thankful that following His path makes all the difference.