Sometimes I think that life is like a rushing river that begins its journey high in the mountains, tumbles down over jagged rocks, rushes headlong over cliffs, and pours booming through the portals of nameless chasms until at last it breaks free of the confines of harsh stone walls and finds a broad plain spread before it – and then the once chaotic millrace flows deep and quiet through lush, verdant meadows, between banks that hold it tenderly.
The choices we make on the way to this place are usually made quickly and without thinking, like the one a boatman makes as his vessel poises on the brink before it plunges headlong into the rushing maelstrom of the rapids. These are the choices we formulate in an instant that, if we live, we look back on and understand, with a quiet shudder in our soul, the eternal enormity of a moment.
But even so, I think it is the choices we make as we drift in the place of safety and security that can be the most consequential. For every soldier knows that it is in the lush growth beside a quiet river, or beneath the deep underbrush of a peaceful forest that the enemy is most likely to be hidden.
Choices – From The Journals of Jenny Hershberger
Jenny’s Choice – The Apple Creek Dream Series
Beautifully spoken as always, Patrick!