I’m not unstoppable, today or any day. But I know someone who is. My God is unstoppable, and yet there are often times when He steps back to allow things other than “good” to accomplish purposes that no “good” can accomplish. It sounds wrong, but I’ve seen it in action. I’ve lived it. And I’ve seen it bless my life far more than I could’ve ever imagined. It has truly made all the difference.
Why did I use a photo of a frozen flower for this post? I took this shot on a frosty morning in autumn after neighboring farmers left their irrigation sprinklers on overnight, and early in the morning a lightly-freezing temperature hit and froze the soaked plants. As you can see, this flower is encased in ice, something you’d think would destroy it. The ice actually protected the plants from the destruction of freezing temperatures and encapsulated their beauty in a way nothing else could. Faith is like that - it seems to encapsulate us against destructive circumstances, and show off the beauty of a spirit that wants God to shine through them.
I’ve learned that God knows more than I do, He sees so much further above and ahead of my thinking, and nothing can bridge that gap. Nothing is meant to – that’s what faith and trust are for. I have more faith and trust in Him than ever – not because His ways make sense to me, but because they don’t.
Trusting in something that I cannot see is so, so hard - and yet it is so rewarding to know that I can trust someone else (who knows so much more than I do!) to accomplish a future I cannot imagine and a plan I have no control over. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever learned to do, and I can barely do it (if at all!); and yet even when things seem impossible and the goal seems so far away, I never give up... because I just can’t.
It’s not in me to quit, which is really funny because there are so many things I am a quitter with, but none of them are truly important. This one thing, to see God shine, I cannot let go of. Deep in my spirit I long for the miracle of the felt connection between my God and me. I’m the fool that keeps going and pushes on anyway, when everyone else turns back, the girl who gets lost in the wondering and wandering, following the unknown-that-could-be-awesome-that-somehow-only-I-can-see-in-the-distance. I love the aloneness of the adventure, and though I don’t realize it at the time, I am brave just by ignoring everyone else and following that wisp in the distance, like Merida in Disney’s Brave. I MUST see where it leads. And because I focus on going “further up and further in” for a long enough moment, I experience things others may not. As C.S. Lewis wrote (and I often quote) in The Magician’s Nephew, “Ours is a high and lonely destiny.” As a dreamer I am privy to miracles hidden to those who see reality in a way a dreamer chooses not to. I take the road almost nobody else seems to choose....
...Segway to my favorite poem of all time, written by a man who saw and recognized the value of going against the flow and reaping rewards for braving the wave alone instead of following the masses:
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, just as fair,
Though having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood and I –
I took the one less traveled by
And that has made all the difference.
-Robert Frost
