Our school district had a day off to celebrate Eid, which is the end of Ramadan. As the weather was finally turning warmer, my girlfriend and I decided to do something with our kids to get them out of the house.
Normally, I’m the one doing the planning, but there was somewhere local that she wanted to visit, and I was ok with it. Matter of fact, it was simply nice having someone else do the planning. Planning is what I do, but I’m also seeing the benefit that I can’t plan everything and there are times that I can just enjoy the process (a hard learned lesson for me).
I decided to let go of my usual ‘we need to do things on this time frame’, so when we ran a little later than we originally planned, it was fine, and I was still able to enjoy (another far way that I’ve come).
When we got to the place and as we were marveling at the beauty, we saw a beach below. We also figured out that even though it looked extremely steep, we could get to it. We saw the first path of what we thought would get us down there. It was STEEP, with a small path through the woods. This is where the adventure really began.
After debating whether we should actually go, we decided to get to the water, we had to. There were times we were literally scooting on our butts. Imagine two moms and three kids as we scooted. We felt like we were at risk of rolling down the hill at some points. When we made it to the clearing, we saw people leisurely strolling and asked how they got down there – it was definitely not the way we took.
We made it to the beach, had an amazing time, and even put our feet in. On the way back, when we looked up, there was a paved path that we could have easily walked. (Insert face palm here)
How many times do we choose to take the extremely difficult path to what God is showing us? The destination might be the same – but, will you choose to take the path that God has for you, or the one that will have you terrified and scooting on your butts? I can laugh now, but it was a sobering lesson.
Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for friendships and the way you answer my prayers for time with friends. Thank you for the lessons you teach us along the way. Help us to choose the path that you would have us take, instead of doing things the hard way ourselves.
