Where are the crossroads?At the intersection of Life's Rd. and Decision St.

My picture of success is one of me trying to cross a wide creek (or crik, depending on where you are from) using these stepping stones that are placed somewhat strategically and yet seemingly at random all at the same time.

Some are close by and can be reached with an easy step, still being careful not to fall in, and some are a bit farther out and your brain has to calculate the distance and figure out if it’s a stretch, or a hop… to get to it.

Others seem so far away that it looks like the journey has to end. You don’t want to get wet and cold so you can’t just hop in the water. Plus it’s mostly too deep, at least up to your waist. And let me tell ya… that just ruins a hunting trip and could possibly be life threatening in the wrong conditions.

So there you stand… looking at the next stepping stone. Stuck at the crossroads. Unable to decipher your choices and unable to make a decision of which way to go.

“Where are the crossroads?”

“At the intersection of Life’s Rd. and Decision St.”

Two literary crossroads come to mind. One is musical, the other poetic.

1. Robert Johnson’s Crossroads where legend has it that he made a deal with the devil for his soul in return for the ability to play ‘the blues’ on his guitar.

2. Robert Frost’s ‘The Road Not Taken’ “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both…”

I wonder what it is with guys named Robert?

I have come to a crossroads in my life. It concerns the two topics I’ve been working on, researching and writing about, and those are theemergingman.com and now definitedad.com.

Two roads, connected at the intersection of Life’s Rd and Decision St. I started down the one and ran into a ‘Road Closed’ barrier that came in the form of having writers block.

I’ve only been really writing for three years but let me tell ya… I don’t get writers block.

There was no way of denying it, there was an impassible impasse and no next stepping stone, just emptiness. Not a sad emptiness, it was an old western movie tumbleweed rolling through the ghost town of gold rush past… emptiness.

As I’ve grown in my relationship with the Holy Spirit I said to myself, “Shhh… quiet your mind.”

Then there it was… the intersection… an intersection of choice… on the left God’s calling… on the right, the thing that I thought I wanted to do first, and had started, had put work into, that gave me a sense of pride and a job well done.

Question: “Have you heard of the experiment with the marshmallows and little kids?”

The kids were shown and had access to 1 marshmallow. But they were told, “If you wait you can have another one to go with this one so you get 2 marshmallows.”

The kids from low income families and poor neighborhoods had a hard time waiting and most ate the single marshmallow right away. The other kids who did not eat the marshmallow showed that they had learned some waiting skills, deferring skills, and… how to focus on something else… other than the lone marshmallow. They waited it out and received both marshmallows.

So there I was standing on a wet rock, midstream, with a lonely marshmallow in my hand and waiting to see/hear what God was trying to teach me.

He then proceeded to show me the other marshmallow. And how to attain it.

I followed the Holy Spirit as he moved my soul.