More Thoughts on the High Road

If you read my last post, I referred to a comment Dan recently made about me taking the high road (especially professionally, when others don't behave in a professional manner.)

I'm in the middle of 3 different battles right now at work. I'm being personally and professionally attacked from every side. And I continue to take the high road. It makes me think of my favorite poet, Robert Frost, and his well-loved poem "The Road Not Taken."

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

The high road is a lonely road. It's dark. Scary. Uncertain. It's full of potholes you can't see. It's bumpy and uneven.

But God told us to take the road not taken. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few. Matthew 7:14

I guess I can take courage in knowing that the high road is exactly where God wants me to be.

I was Googling to find the image for this post. I ran across this story:

During the Civil War, confederate General W. H. C. Whiting was jealous of rival general Robert E. Lee. Consequently Whiting spread many rumors about him. But there came a time when General Lee could have gotten even. When President Jefferson Davis was considering Whiting for a key promotion, he asked General Lee what he thought of Whiting. Without hesitation, Lee endorsed and commended Whiting. The officers who witnessed the exchange were astonished. Afterward, one of them asked Lee if he had forgotten all the unkind words that Whiting had spread about him.

“I understand the president wanted to know my opinion of Whiting,” responded Lee, “not Whiting’s opinion of me.”

It doesn't really matter what the people in my battles think of me. It matters what God thinks of me. And so I continue on the road not taken.