Roadblocks vs Tollbooths

I’ll be the first to admit that when my plans get thrown off course, I tend to get a little irritated. My natural reaction is not: “No worries! It’s all good! We’ll get there eventually!” I wish I could tell you that I’m that laid back. I’m not. Sometimes those plans being thrown off have nothing to do with me, sometimes they do. Consider for a moment that you are headed somewhere and you come up to a roadblock. Is there anything you could have done to avoid that? Possibly but most likely not. However, you are now faced with some decisions. Will you get mad? Probably. Is that anger going to remove the roadblock or make you get where you need to be any faster? Not a chance. Are you going to have to turn around and choose another path? If you want to get there, then yes.

We don’t like it when we’re not in control. We like it even less when someone is telling us to do something we don’t want to do; don’t agree with; or feel like it is infringing upon what we feel is a basic right. We tend to mistake inconvenience for oppression.

Refusing to adjust and make changes is not determination; it is stubbornness. What’s the difference? Determination is positive; feel light; and can take you far. It is a willingness to change as needed; and keeping an open mind. Stubbornness is a heavy feeling; a refusal to budge; a negative, closed mind; and will hold you back and keep you stuck.

Roadblock after roadblock; rejection after rejection can have a heavy and negative impact on anyone’s mindset and outlook on life. It can take such a deep root that you actually become addicted to feeling miserable. Why? It feels familiar. Many are actually afraid to heal because their entire identity is centered around the trauma they have experienced. They have no idea who they are outside of that trauma and it can be terrifying.

If we spend our entire life with the mindset of “my bad experiences messed me up and that’s why I am how I am” instead of learning how to heal and learning and growing from those experiences, we are our own problem and roadblock.

However, in our frustrations, we tend to label all hard times as a roadblock but I am challenging us to ask ourselves if the problem is actually a tollbooth. What does that mean? We might have to pause, but if we’re willing to pay the price, we can keep moving forward.

This year has undoubtedly been challenging. Yet, I do NOT believe that it has all been for naught and that this entire year was a wash. Did we sacrifice? Yes! Did we have to fight for peace like never before? Yes! Did many suffer loss of some sort? Yes! Nevertheless, if you’re reading this, you’re still standing.

You and I are the ones who choose how to frame and give perspective to what we go through. Challenges can lead to change. Breakdowns can lead to breakthroughs. The course and the quality of our life is going to be determined by our ability to handle what we didn’t see coming. Difficult times can diminish us, define us, or develop us. We get to choose. Happiness is a choice, not a result. No one and nothing will make you happy until you choose to be.

You might be at that tollbooth for a while. Your patience (or lack of it) will be tested. Yet, it’s an opportunity to develop it. Your faith will be tested. Yet, let me encourage you: sometimes faith changes the situation and sometimes faith changes the way we see the situation. During seasons of waiting, you have the opportunity to rest, reflect, readjust, and reset.

As we move through various stages of our lives, we reach junctions—points of transition—where we must shift gears and slow down. Suddenly, we realize we have to pay a price to proceed. It’s like a tollbooth. The price might be a tough decision we must make or a situation we must leave behind. It can be anything that is costly to us. It’s at these moments that we discover that the junction will either become a tollbooth or a roadblock. We either choose to pay the price or we don’t find it in ourselves to do what is hard and we get stuck. I hope you don’t hold on to your history at the expense of your destiny.