Heading West

Many years ago a movement swept through America. The call went out to all who had the courage and vision to "Head West." What a picture was drawn for them. . . The West is where you want to be. There is land for everyone - for the taking! Beautiful. Fertile. Opportunity for everyone. Don't miss your opportunity to be one of the first to stake your claim!

The call went out and hordes signed up to join the wagon trains pulling out of Independence, Missouri. As the pioneers bought supplies and lined up their wagons, their eyes shone with the excitement of what would be waiting at the end of the trail. I think it fair to say not one of them had a real understanding of what lay between Missouri and the far west they envisioned in their dreams.

Can't you hear the conversation. . .?

"Why, honey," one confident husband says to his rather nervous wife, "there isn't going to be anything to this. We've got a nice, sturdy wagon. We're all together, and we have plenty of food. We're just going to roll along the trail for a while and soon we'll have everything we've dreamed of. Just think of it!"

I don't know how long before the starry looks faded from their eyes - somewhere between broken wagon wheels and Indian attacks. Maybe it was the weevils in the flour, or the snowstorm that left them stranded in the mountains for months on end. Perhaps it was losing a child to illness because there were not enough medical supplies, or simply the fatigue that came from fighting dust, heat and long days of the grueling cruelness of the trail.

Every pioneer who started down the trail, if they didn't die, had one of three things happen. Some gave up and turned back. Others decided they couldn't take any more and simply built a house where they stopped. Then there were the others... the ones who made it all the way to the West.

Yes, somewhere along the way the starry look faded from their eyes. . . faded. . . to be replaced by determination. Broken wagon wheels; Indian attacks; weevils; snowstorms; death; fatigue; choking dust and long days. They all became daily obstacles to be endured and overcome, but at some point each person who made it simply decided nothing was going to stop them. They had left behind their former lives to go somewhere new. They were going…and nothing was stopping them.

So, what about you? Do you have a dream? Do you have something you've started, but then turned back because it seemed so hard? Or maybe you're still on the trail, wondering which obstacle will be the one to destroy what you've worked so hard for.
Maybe you're just looking at the trail, thinking, "No way. Not me. That just looks too hard." Yet your heart yearns to go where the trail will take you.
You have a choice to make every single day. You can stay right where you are, or you can go on an adventure to accomplish what you dream of accomplishing. Not going may seem safer, but the truth is that not going will only assure you stay right where you are in your life.

What do you want? Where do you want to go? The only way to get there is to start your journey – then determine to not let anything stop you. You can do it! You CAN turn your life into one grand adventure!! No one can stop you...except you!