You Matter – Dr L Parrott - The Road Less Traveled.

Chapter 1:

I have always wanted to walk the road less traveled because I have NEVER wanted to blend in with everyone else. Thus I have always marched to the beat of my own drum. Early on, it was because I WAS different, now it is because I choose to be different.

Dr Parrott asks who would not want to take the road that “makes a difference?” Like her, I also find poetic value in the image of the two paths diverging in the wood. She goes on to say that we define that path less traveled by the famous and respected, like Mother Theresa or Franklin Graham, people who have “MADE A DIFFERENCE in the world around us that we can see. Dr Parrott talks about how we have lost our sense of idealism and determination to travel that different road and make a difference because we have had to focus on getting through daily life which leaves so little time left for dramatic acts that change the world for most of us.

That is ALL in our perception Dr Parrott says. She talks about how life bogs us down in our thinking and we began to wonder if anything we do makes a difference in the kingdom at all. This, she says, is where we start to get off track. The TRUTH is that we do make a difference in the kingdom! And the more we understand that difference we make, the more powerful that difference will be.

None of us are clones, we are each created individually by a creative God who fashions each of us for a specific role in His Kingdom. No one else on earth can do “our job” exactly like God created us to do it. He created Mother Theresa to do a specific task, fashioned her to be able to accept and excel at the obstacles she would meet as she worked on behalf of the Kingdom of God. We are created to do a specific task of living our lives as only we have the gifts and gracing’s to do. That is why we cannot compare ourselves to each other. Each of us is an original.

She then talks about how we do our BEST when we love and that ultimately everything we do and excel at will be powered by love, therefore the most important thing for us to pursue is love of our fellow man, like God loves. Each of us must find our personal pathway less traveled to expand and express that love and “that will make all the difference.” She then talks about a teacher who rearranges her classroom and makes sure that the shy boy is in the center of kids so he will be encouraged to interact and make friends. The teacher “loves” her students and has traveled a path that could possibly define the entire rest of the little boy’s life, because she made choices during her “everyday life” that expressed her love of the world around her and took a path (made an effort to specifically alter one thing while doing something else) that may make all the difference.

This woman and all others like her may not be making a difference on a world wide scale. They may not be on the front lines of social change and justice, but they are each making the world around THEM a better place. And no one but the Father can know if that seed planted might someday produce fruit that will change the world itself. Like the nameless men who lowered Paul from the wall in a basket, they share in every salvation and changed life that Paul influences from that moment on to this present day. We never know what lives we touch in our little worlds that ripple out to one day change the whole world.

This is where some of my friends seemed to have bogged down. They believe that they can only make a difference if they are living in poverty or serving mankind for the greater good. They “punish” themselves because they believe that living life without living for the greater good is not God’s plan. They err, not in wanting to live a life serving the Kingdom, but in believing that those who do not live this lifestyle is not walking their own God appointed paths less traveled. The road that makes all the difference is not, despite what many think, along the road to Calcutta or on the mean streets of the inner city, but a pathway of the heart. It is not so much about how you are living as the heart you express as you walk your path that makes it a road less traveled. The difference is in the wanting to make a difference and making daily choices in the life God has given us when we show more grace, compassion, understanding, patience, and empathy. Love. Love is not bound by borders or preconceived notions about difference making. It is not the segmental drivel found in a Hallmark Card, Love is hard work and not many live a life of love such as we have all been called to. It does not matter WHERE God has called you; Geography is irrelevant, as long as you are making the best use of your life WHERE you are.