This summer has been exhausting. This summer has been
OVERWHELMING. This summer has been a mountain I never thought I could summit.
Yet, here I am, nearly at the top, looking down at a view that gives me mixed
emotions.
I see the dense terrain that left me bruised and scraped. I
see dark clouds swirling in the distance that pelted me with storm after storm.
I see the miry mudslides that threatened to drag me off the trail. There is
icy, soul-numbing snow. There is whimpering heat that reddens my flesh. And at
last I see down in the distance the very beginning of the trail – a dense, lush
forest promising peace – carefully concealing all these harsh elements behind a
curtain of inviting green.
Who can know what is ahead? I didn’t. I naively packed my
bags and set off for this summit expecting a lazy, meandering trail. I brought
a hammock when what I really needed was a machete. My journey this summer was
an unexpected one. Did I take a wrong turn? Did I miss the trail I was meant to
take? By all accounts I could say yes – that this was all a giant mistake –
that it was something sinister that dragged me from the scenic path and onto
the harsh, exposed terrain that would test me so brutally.
However, on this path – this cursed, mean, cruel path – I
see on the edges of the trails all the great and mighty climbers who have
pushed me forward. Friends. Strangers. Family. I see the kind eyes of my
parents in the distance, not really sure what storms I’m embedded in but
nevertheless watching over me. I see the gentle hands of good-hearted strangers
dressing my wounds. There are friends that draw near when I am cold, who let me
stand in their shade when the sun beats down, whose voices that speak over the
deafening silence of the night, and who have pulled me close to their side when
the howling wilderness threatens to disorient me.
If I had not walked this path I would not have been able to
receive such strong and fervent friendship, such good will.
This path has been thorny, holy, Hellish, divine, harrowing, haunting, quiet, deafening.
And as the thorns dig into my feet with every step I see my blood flow purely, beautifully... and my soles pound hell up the mountain, and my heart races, and I am almost
there.
