The paths we never walk

I was sitting in front of the fire tonight and thinking about life - not the path it has taken, but about the ones it hasn't. There was a job at a hardware store that I am thankful I didn't get. The cars I almost bought. The houses that I was going to remodel. The relationships that never took off. The adventures that never got lived. There are vacations that never happened, and things I wanted to try and never did. There are memories that are real, and a thousand more that were just my imagination. I used to think that there was one right path for a person's life, but as I walk the one I am on longer, I realize that it is one of many paths I could have taken.

But this path has led me to this specific place in the journey, and who knows why I ended up here.

The answer to that last question is 'God'. God knew the path from the very beginning, from the moment I was conceived in my mother's womb. He has known the devastating mistakes, and the profound victories - long before they happened they were a memory to Him.

I don't know if anything I do in my life will really ever make any kind of impact in the eternal realm of things. There are people in the world who would say I touched their lives in dynamic ways. There are others who would say I am the reason their lives are a mess. What do you do with the dichotomies of life?

In the end, God is all that matters. He is the only one that makes the number of days we live make any sense whatsoever. He is the one who weaves together the threads of our lives in ways that makes a tapestry ultimately. Out of the victories and devastations, He makes something beautiful. Sometimes He uses the path we walk to create that living testimony of Himself. Other times He uses the ones we never walk as the defining moments of who we are not - to shape the person we become.

Who knows but for such a time as this we were put on this earth. How will the next moment on the path be lived? And what will He give the world through the unique vessel of us?