I don’t know about the rest of you, but do you ever get down on yourself? I do. I’m sure we all have our reasons for dragging our chin.
Too often I make blunders, innocent mistakes perhaps, but I say things without realizing how un-tactful they are, only to realize later, much too late, the potency of their poison.
And then I check myself into solitary confinement and beat myself up. Can anybody else relate?
God’s been speaking to me about this. I laughed when I opened God’s word today. Here’s what He had to say today: “Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him” (Mark 1:1b).
Ha ha. Wow. I’ve left more of a broken trail than a straight path. My words have hiccuped out like volcanic lava and have hardened into boulders. So much for a paved highway for the Lord to take. Instead, He had to negotiate a wounded landscape before he arrived in the dark, sunless valley of my soul. He rescued me and brought me out into the light.
But others are still coming after me and I’m leaving a crooked route for them. I worry about how I’ve hurt them, and how they need healing. The Lord has reminded me, though, that straight lanes are boring.
Think about those mountain top lakes. The only way in is on foot. There are no paved roads. Hikers must clamber over boulders left from landslides, or cross gaping cracks in glaciers. They encounter mud and slide around, or land on cactus and find themselves bleeding, but still, the only way to the top is through a catastrophe zone.
So I have to live and let it happen. Some days I’m a walking disaster and that’s all I can muster. But I’m trusting that God will take the tsunami of my bloopers and create a National Park. Others will come behind, trip on my words and tumble into the crevasses of my botch-ups. I hope they don’t turn around. If they keep searching for wholeness, they’ll find it at the end of my broken trail.
Someday they’ll stand with me on the outlook point and together we’ll drink in the magnificent colors of God’s grace.
Pam Mytroen
