Roads
(This writing is dedicated to that time in all our lives when we didn’t have GPS’s on our phones. Thanks MapQuest!)
You know that feeling when you’re traveling, and you suddenly realize you might be lost? You might have taken a wrong turn somewhere, or missed your turn all together. And all of a sudden, when you admit in your mind that it’s a possibility you are lost, you suddenly become hyper-aware of the length of the road you’re on. Every inch feels like that much longer that you’ll be off course, that much farther away from where you think you’re supposed to be. Every sight you see feels that much more unfamiliar.
There’s a road in my home town that I know well. In the middle of the developing city, around business buildings and busy streets, it remains a piece of rural Raleigh. Beautiful country fields on either side, horses and hay bales, old farm homes and ranches, oak and pine trees. It really only connects two big streets, a definite beginning and end. But if I didn’t live here, if I didn’t know my way, it would be a street that I could feel lost on, and it would seem to lead me further into lostness, further into nowhere that I know or think I should be.
It is a beautiful street, one of my favorite streets to cut through on. To me, it’s a quick pass. To a stranger to these parts, trying to find some place specific, it’s a long road you’d wonder if you should be on.
I’ve had a lot of seasons in my life like this. I know i’m following directions all right, and after a while I get a pretty good idea of the pace and destination. In the thick of the journey I just go, and lose sight of precision in my directions. And then, the creeping realization – “Did I go too far?” “Did I miss my turn?” which quickly turns into full-out panic. I am lost. And the road I’m on, because I cannot see the destination on the other side, becomes impossibly long, impossibly out in the middle of nowhere. Wilderness.
This is when I retrace my steps in my head. I read the directions carefully, out load, and slowly, usually with complementing hand gestures. This is the point at which I question where I am, how I got there, where I’m going, and usually assume I am in the wrong place.
God loves that road in my life. In between point A and point B, points of clear revelations of himself to me and his plan for me, He directs me. He directs - sometimes I assume control, sometimes I think I know which way to go, I assume where point B is and how I should get there, and why that point B, and the way to it, is the best. Sometimes He quiets His voice of leading. And I drive, and I drive, until the impasse that seems long and lost.
The rural road in my home town is one of my favorites because I know it well – where it is, where it takes me – and it is a hidden gem of beauty. I see the beauty because I’m confident of where I’m going.