Should I Stay or Should I Go?

Wisdom in Abiding

By Lori Ann Wood

I don’t know about you, but I have struggled with being confident in my discernment as an adult. Somehow, believing I had wisdom was easier when I was younger. That kind of rootedness is what Scripture calls abiding, and it may be the deepest form of discernment available to us. As a teenager and young adult, decisions seemed more black-and-white. But it turns out, wisdom depends less on our actual decision, and more on how deeply we are rooted in God.

My husband and I were high school sweethearts, both attending the same area-wide rural school for grades 9-12. He returned recently for a class reunion. Many of our classmates still live in that small farming community. Over the years since leaving, forming a family elsewhere, and burying my parents there, I’ve considered what I missed by not staying.

The Choice to Leave

I grew up assuming that the valiant were those who ventured out, who moved into unknown lands, who left the safety of home. But I am learning that perhaps our truest, bravest heroes are the ones who stayed.

Sometimes I still feel guilty that I didn’t stay, or at least that I never seriously considered it. Following grad school, I turned down Dad’s offer to go into business with him in his accounting practice in my small hometown. I raised three of my parents’ grandchildren five hours away. They lived their last decades alone, with no relative closer than a half day’s drive.

How would my life—and theirs—be different if I had stayed?