In the course of living life you have to make a lot of decisions. Some of them are a whole lot easier to decide upon than others. Sometimes I have a hard time deciding what to cook for supper, or whether to take a bath or a shower, to read in bed or watch tv... all horribly vital decisions in the greater scheme of things. : )

Sometimes you make a decision, well, at least I do, and somewhere down the road of life, you think back and wonder, if I had made a different decision, would my life, the outcome of that decision up on my life, be a whole lot different, or not.

Some decisions are fairly easy to look back upon and see that, yes, in fact, doing something different would most certainly have made a huge impact on the course of your life. Others, well, sometimes you just will never know if you had turned at a different corner while driving to the grocery store, if would have made a difference to anything at all.

Some decisions I look back upon and can easily tell that had I not made the decision that I did, things would have been so very different. When I think like that I always tell myself that also, had I not made the decisions that I have made, good or bad, I might not have the wonderful children that I have or be living in a place right now that I truly love. I just wouldn't be who I am today.

Still other decisions I think back upon and do wonder, over and over, if I had done something different, would the outcome have not been so terrible. The one that stays with me, and will probably never go away, is a simple phone call that I made many years ago. I was trying to reach an old friend. I got a familiy member, but, for some reason, I didn't tell them who I was and hung up the phone not knowing anything more about my old friend. Until I got another phone call a few days later to tell me that the very same friend that I'd been trying to reach had died in a car accident. That haunts me. Had I tried harder to reach that person, would they still be alive today? I'll never know. I know that God has things in control and that what happened was supposed to happen, but that naggle of doubt will always stick with me.

I've lost more than one old friend over the years. Some to death, some to a failure to keep up communications, some to life moving us along. I've also kept some old friends who have been around for almost as long as I can remember. With the abilities of social networks and search engines these days, I've been able to reconnect with even more old friends. Because friends are very, very special people, who I've learned to appreciate and love dearly, those old friends are getting notes and messages and emails and phonecalls and little bits of communication from me. Not because I want a thing, except for them all to know, that in some way, they have positively influenced my life and that I appreciate that greatly. I wouldn't be where I am today, with the friends that I've made over the years.

I hope that the next time that something urges me to make a phone call, and to keep on calling, I listen. Maybe a different decision on my part will make a difference in the life of a friend.