Sharks and Mountains

Thanks to a friend who is even more pregnant than I am, I had a kid-free trip to Nashville for P3's OB appointment. During the drive, I took advantage of the opportunity and ejected the music with songs about saying "Please and Thank You" and counting to ten, and rummaged through my old CD wallet to pull out something more "grown up." I decided on a mixed CD I received from a guy I was friends with in college after my trip to Russia in 2006. Three bars into the first track, I was unexpectedly pulled back to when I was 20 years old, living in Rexburg, ID as a full time student, facing about a trillion different paths that would dictate how the rest of my life would go.

The decisions I had to make during that time in my life were many, certainly, but I always felt like the path that I ultimately chose was the "right" one. After much praying, counseling with people I looked up to, and more praying, I decided to put my higher education on hold for 18 months, put off the suitors who could have easily been more than just the means to score free frozen yogurt on a Friday night, and to instead serve a full time mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in Nashville, TN. I wouldn't know until after that mission had ended that it would be the means of meeting the father of my children. Making Logic a permanent part of my life was as easy as breathing. Again, the decision I made to marry him felt very "right". 

Though, through these four and a half years of building a life together after the covenants have been made has felt more like swimming through white rapids with sharp rocks that slice up your legs to attract sharks, than breathing easily while leisurely floating in a hot air balloon (something I've always wanted to do, by the way).

Would my life be easier if I picked one of those Friday night fro-yo guys over the path I did choose? Would my life be harder? Would I even be married at all? Undoubtedly my life would different... Or maybe Fate would arrange a different way for Logic and I to meet, but maybe not.

I look at friends and even family who jump ship when they see or start to feel rapids. But I haven't. Perhaps it's optimism. Maybe it's fear. It could very well be blind ignorance. I like to think that the stubborn commitment that Logic and I have for each other will do us well in the end, even in the midst of sea monsters tearing away at our flesh. It's hard, though, when there isn't an end in sight.

But then I watch things like this:

And I remember...

There is a balm in Gilead. The assurance that I won't ever be left forsaken is what keeps me grounded during times of white water. These days I feel like it's more difficult to know what the "right" choice is, but I do know that regardless of my mountain, I will climb it.