Choices Matter
Last Sunday I watched an interview with Carmen Rasmussen Herbert, a former finalist on the second season of American Idol. When she talked about the decisions she eventually made that took her from the “top of the charts” kind of fame she thought she wanted, it reminded me of some of the choices I made when my own “two roads diverged.” I wasn’t on the road to fame and fortune, but, like everyone, I had to make a choice that determined a set path for the rest of my life.
I was eighteen and ready to graduate at the top of my class from Idaho Falls High School. Some of my teachers and counselors were pushing me to go East. They wanted me to apply at the big Ivy-League schools or fancy women’s colleges. My decision was to go instead to Ricks College, 30 miles from home. I had a very prestigious scholarship that I could use anywhere I chose to go. It seemed like everyone but my family was horrified that I did not want to “go big.”
So, I went off to Ricks College (now BYU-Idaho), “and that has made all the difference.” My mother died that next year, succumbing to heart disease complicated by the Hong-Kong flu. I was so thankful for the weekends spent at home over that first year of college. Who knows what the other road might have been like? Wherever that road would have taken me, I am happy in the life journey taken.
