Trekking Through Shadowlands

I lay in the back of the truck and wished that it would go on forever.

It had been a long day… a long, hard, confusing sort of day… a day that you come away from shaking your head and wondering what just happened. One of those days when you search really hard for peace… but it seems to stay so out of reach. I was hurt and baffled and scared – very scared – afraid that that which I hold dear might be slowly slipping from me.

Uncertainty frightens me. Frenzy takes over. I try so hard to fix things in my mind but in the end I just create dragons… dragons of shadow and mystery and fancy. Sometimes my shadow dragons frighten me because their form seems so clear on the wall in front of me, all of their menacing features so real and tangible – even before they are seen. Sometimes they are just a nagging dread, sitting in the back of my mind, tormenting me with hints and whispers; smoke and echoing lies. Sometimes I wake up and realize that the dark form on the wall before me is really just my own shadow.

Sometimes I fight me.

I’m young and I love young people. I love seeing hope and ambition and potential in its first budding stage. I love nothing so well as a starry-eyed dreamer… one who not only watches the stars but reaches for them as well. Yet my heart aches when those that I love seem to wander, to founder, to fall. Sometimes our endless searching for a path becomes our very downfall… we’re always looking and never finding. Someone in a movie once said… “Young people always want to be traveling. Even if they find food and a warm fire and kindness, they wish to be gone.” Perhaps our over-worked imaginations tend to get the better of us… whatever we do not yet have becomes our object of worship. The unattainable is always bigger.

Better. Brighter.

Sometimes we forget what we have.

If you’ve followed my thought life through my posts at all throughout the past year, you may know that my topic of choice has been waiting. I feel like I’m always waiting. I wanted to see the world; to see what’s going to happen; to have the future now. Endless opportunities, possibilities seemed to present themselves… I felt like a kid in a candy shop, struggling so with the idea of having to pick only one that I picked none at all. Trust was key; my heart was frail; just when I thought I had faith the Lord would throw something else into my life and I would fall to the ground with a thud. Pictures come to mind of wings being trimmed; plants being pruned; a brave, new little tree kept from erring by a sturdy post in the ground. Its great shows of bravery have only proved how young and green and inexperienced it is in this fine art of growing. And though that bright yellow tape may feel like a hindrance, a roadblock, a ball and chain… in the end it keeps the tree from falling right over in its overexuberant zeal to get somewhere.

It had been a long day… a long, hard, confusing sort of day… and I climbed into the back of that old truck for a moment alone. I stopped for a moment to breathe. No proper words came to mind… but I just started talking. Talking to One who hears. I talked and talked and talked – all about life, about my fears, about the future, about my desire to find it… to know how I should live, personally, in light of this great salvation. I talked until there were no words left and then I stopped for a moment to wait. I know THE way… but what is my way? We are each given gifts, abilities, lives very different from those next to us in order that we might bring glory to God in a manner entirely our own.

Where to, God? Where to?

Oh Captain. Oh Captain. Guide me. What direction? Hear now my declaration of dependence.

The stars seemed brighter tonight than usual. Almost closer. In the distance a train sounded. In the air tension; something hung in the balance. My mind, frenzied, kept reevaluating, rethinking – still searching. Then, suddenly, a few short, quiet words…Be more quiet now and wait for a voice to say…Be more quiet now and wait for a voice to say... My mind stopped running and one memory pierced my mind with sharp force.
A dark night. Stars as well. Open sky. Caborca. Another life-changing question. The same words, the same melody playing softly, slowly, clearly in my head. Be more quiet now.

Nights like this make my soul forget fear.

I lay in the back of the truck and wished that it would go on forever.

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Ecclesiastes 8:5-6