Choose Your Own Adventure

When my kids were young they loved the "Choose Your Own Adventure" books. In a choose your own adventure book at the conclusion of every chapters there are two choices and the story changes based on the choice you make. When you think about it, aren't we living choose your own adventure lives? Every decision we make, every minute, of everyday alters and directs our story. As a teenager I dated some really nice guys but when I choose to marry John (or when I convinced him to choose to marry me) I chose a specific adventure path with unique challenges and joys. Would my life have been different if I had chosen Tom? or Dick? or Harry? Absolutely! Would it have been better? or worse? I'll never know.

Some of the adventure choices we make are small; should I go to the store or take a nap; some are more important and possibly life changing: should I go to church today or stay in bed? And some are absolutely life altering: should I marry in the temple or elope to Vegas? And then there are the adventure choices that we can't see are going to be life altering. Image the adventure choice of the people that work in the Twin Towers in downtown Manhattan that got up and chose to go to work on Sept. 11, 2001; if the had known where their adventure choice would take them would they have gone to work that day--of course not!

I can think of several life altering adventure choices that I have made but I remember one that was so small and seemingly insignificant that it still boggles my mind how it changed and shaped my life. In 1990 I was serving on the PTA at Riverton Elementary. One day I stopped by principal Tom Hick's office to asked him a question and I noticed my telephone number taped to his desk. I asked him about it and he said he kept my number by his phone because I was the only mother he knew that didn't have preschoolers at home that he could count on in a pinch. Then he made the fateful statement: "Jill, you need to make yourself less available." That day I went home and checked out classes at SLCC and started on one of the greatest adventures of my life. Taking 1 class a semester I graduated with an Associate's Degree in 10 years (ok, I'm slow). I transferred to BYU where I graduated in 2002. Two more years of grad school and I have the best part-time job on the planet.

Not only did that small adventure choice alter my life but I believe that it also altered my children's lives. Because they watched me put great attention on education, so did they. Now my dad says that it's my fault that 10 of my grandchildren live in Kentucky and two in Iowa. He says,  "if you educate children they move away," so did I set myself up to miss large chunks of Cooper, John, Dallin, Mylee, Sam, Tyler, Eva, Davis, Josh, Emery, and the yet-to-be-born princess's lives by the choice I made that day? Yes. I did. Would I change that choice if I could go back? no. Did it bring consequences both good and not-so-good? Yes--but what an adventure.