Happy New Years Eve Dec 31, 2013

Stay Straight and Focus:

As I rode Allie today in the field, I thought “stay straight and focus” on where you are going whenever she would turn her head to look back at the barn.  She would turn her head left or right, depending on what she was seeing off to the side.  I thought, “come on, girl, go straight”.

Then I realized my life was just like this.  I would try to go straight and stay on the course that I, or God, had chosen for me.  Then something would catch my attention and I would start looking to the right or left.  Sometimes I would keep going straight, but like Allie today, I had a hard time thinking of going straight as my attention would be on what was either to the right or left of me.  Sometimes, I wouldn’t go straight and would actually veer off course and start going to the right or left.

 

What is it that draws our attention off of our initial or desired path and makes us look or go a different way?  When we think we have our path clearly in front of us, and we start making plans to follow it, and we do start to follow it, why can’t we follow it to the end?  Before we realize it, there are little turns to the right and maybe even bigger turns to the left.  Sometimes, there are delays and something we have to go backwards a few steps.

 

I start to think that I am meant to follow the new path.  Why, what is wrong with the old path?  If I start the new path, do I know where it is heading or what I am suppose to do? Probably not.  But if I was not suppose to follow this new path, then why was the choice in front of me?

 

I begin to think that the path that I was initially on isn’t the path that I want to be on any longer.  The new path is taking me into a different direction, one that I wouldn’t have thought of earlier but now looks like a good choice.  Just like Allie wanting to take another route around a brush pile or through a field, maybe when there is a turn in our path we need to think that the new path is a better path.

 

New paths bring different choices.  New paths make us choose between old ways and new ways.  New paths bring a difference to our lives. 

New Paths.  New Choices.  New Ways.   Sometimes, different choices aren’t what we would want.  Sometimes they are sad, sometimes hard, sometimes they are ones that we don’t want, but once the choice is made, and we let ourselves change, sometimes we see that the choice make us a better person.  New paths make a wonderful difference in our lives if we choose to follow them.  One thing is for sure, though, we can only change if we follow different paths.  Make a change, make a choice, and become what you are meant to become.

As 2013 comes to an end, so does the old paths.  2014 will bring new paths, new choices, and a new way of life.