Last night I got to thinking about my days as a high school tennis player. I played JV freshman year and varsity for half of my sophomore year and all my junior year. Junior year brought out the best tennis of my life. Focusing on doubles, my good friend/doubles partner and I took second in district and got to compete (read: we showed up and got blown off the court) in the regional tournament down in Waco, where we saw a whole different league of players.

Despite our success and lots of fun, I decided not to play for the team my senior year. The main reason was wanting to write for the newspaper, a class which met during tennis practice, and wanting to have my other fourth period off for all the other stuff I did. I had a few other reasons as well, including being tired of the constant stress of calling shots in or out when I often couldn’t seen them clearly. Coach and my friends were a little disappointed, and my doubles partner was very disappointed, but I had to make a choice.

Last night I got to wondering: how would my life have been different had I played tennis my senior year instead? How big of an impact did that single choice make? Did it really matter at all? In the grand scheme of things it was probably a medium-significance decision, right? What I eat for lunch is low significance, I assume. Whom I marry is high significance. Yeah, medium sounds about right. Let’s see…

Obviously, I would have kept playing, probably gotten better, possibly won district and returned to regionals, and helped out with team tennis. I would have maintained a better relationship with a friend who didn’t know Jesus. I suppose my college resume would have been roughly the same after trading another year of a varsity sport for one extra activity. Due to time constraints, I probably would not have gotten involved in the spring one-act play, which means I probably would not have started my three-year relationship with Dawn, would not have gone to California the following summer for my first real mission trip, would never have gotten involved with a charismatic church, and probably would have avoided my little spiritual wilderness that resulted from my relationship with Dawn. Most likely I would have stayed at Baylor on the weekends instead of coming home to see her, getting to know my classmates better and possibly meeting a nice Baylor girl. Who knows, maybe I would have ended up marrying nice Baylor girl. If I’d already married nice Baylor girl, I probably wouldn’t have even met Jenny or had Brenden. I also might have pursued another career besides tech writing. Wow.

Only God knows what other changes would have resulted from that one decision back in high school. It had a much bigger impact than I’d realized, some negative, some positive. Would I go back and change it if I could? No. The road I took made me who I am today and brought me to my wife, son, job, friends, and everything else in my life. I am grateful for where I am. But I wonder how many decisions I’ve made somewhat flippantly that turned out to be much more important than expected.

Can any of you think of a choice you made that produced significant, unexpected results?