The Roads We Have Taken Make Us Who We Are

I am not the same person I was 10 years ago, or one year ago, or even a day ago. Each day we grow in some way, we change, we know more, we have more experience and we see life in a different light. Our core values and beliefs may stay somewhat the same but life happening around us influences us. We meet someone by chance perhaps that gives us much to think about, or we read a book with a perspective we never have seen before. These things change us.
As a family we have traveled a few roads, learning, laughing, taking away the good things, casting off the things we know don't work and growing from these journeys sometimes they seem more like adventures !
I carry with me bits and pieces of my childhood, my school days, my teen years, my young adult hood, life as a newly wed, life as a new mom, life as a 30 year old woman, life as a new homestead wife and mother and life in the plain world and now its as though the pieces are all fitting together, giving me a life that is rich with experience, rich in friendships and love. I can now sit back, look at all that has taken place in my life and glean the golden bits of wisdom and value from the many experiences. Hopefully, the journey is far from over. As a new grandmother, there is so much to explore with another generation by my side from time to time.
I no longer look like I did in the picture above, which was taken a year or so ago, but some days I want to look that way, then some days I want to RUN from that look. Some days I just prefer to wear flip flops and jeans. But that single picture above reminds me of what I have learned from that time in life and how it transformed our family life, our finances, our spiritual outlook. It was a building block. Maybe even a cornerstone. I can choose to take from that road travelled the good things and also look at the things that were negative and remember to not take on those negative things ever again. The looking down the nose at others, the judgementalism. The wrong attitudes.

Never changing, never growing, shows a lack of living. My dear sweet husband is a very consistent person. He has had the same style of dress and modesty of life for as long as we have been married, but he has changed. He has grown. He may not change on the outside as much as I have, (plain men dress much like the world anyway) Dark pants, button up shirt is really not distinctive ! But his vision for his life has changed through time. So no matter how the outside appearance changes or remains the same, our hearts see and feel things differently as we go through life. Our belief systems may remain the same doctrine wise, but our hearts change. Our application of our beliefs may transform in time. We may become more compassionate due to our own hardships or we may become more judgemental and harsh. That choice is always ours. We may find it easier to be sympathetic with time and experience or we might take the attitude that everyone should just toughen up and move past the person in need.
The roads we take, the roads we are led to, make us who we are today and tomorrow a single event can change much of what we feel and think today.
We can start down one road and soon discover its not the road we need, so we turn back. Or perhaps we take the road less travelled, and that as we know, makes all the difference some times.
Another thing, my map of roads I must take is not the same as yours and yours is not for me. God has made us each different and with different needs, different lessons to learn. That is the beauty of being unique.

Me, Winter, 2005 I think. Getting ready to do chores