My Faith has always been tricky to explain. I was not raised in the Church, neither of my parents are deeply religious people. Most of my friends are either non-religious or outright atheists. Yet somehow I have always felt the pull of God and have always thought he was looking out for me.
I am not a zealot, I don't "witness" or preach. In my mind God has given me enough of a task to keep myself straight and on the right path. I don't have time to take to judge how others live. If I outwardly promote my Faith it is simply by living my life the best I feel I can, if others see something useful and insightful from me then so be it.
So, tonight I want to share a story and to do so with accuracy I felt I needed to throw out that little blurb about my Faith and relationship with God. Otherwise this may seem a bit random and odd...it still probably will. So thus is Life.
A few years back I went to Wyoming on a vacation to pick up and delivery back to Georgia a custom made gate set my Father had ordered for the small horse ranch he had built in Zebulon. It was my kind of vacation, me in a vehicle driving and seeing what I wanted along the way. Lookout Mountain, the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Wall Drug, Deadwood, Mt. Rushmore and Yellowstone. Somewhere between Rushmore and Yellowstone though I came face to face with God in a moment that has changed my life.
I had started out early that morning after staying the night in Sheridan, WY. I had breakfast with a friend I had met online playing World of Warcraft who happened to be from that little town, then started across HWY 14 on my way to Cody, WY. and Yellowstone. Hwy 14 runs right through Bighorn National Forest and if you look at it on a map it appears to have been drawn by a retarded monkey with a thin pencil and loose string as a straight edge. This curvy little stretch also closes in the winter time and I was pushing to make it before they shut it down.
I had already spun my truck out on the interstate twice the day before, so I was driving this skinny little road with extra care. The road conditions were horrid and as I neared the top of mountain before the highway led down the backside in to Greybull,WY. the weather got nasty.
Near blizzard nasty, and I was getting scared.
For close to 20 minutes I was lucky if I made even three miles, my fingers were numb, from fright I had gripped the steering wheel so tight and I was starting to think I was going to get stranded on the mountain and lost. Maybe not reasonable, but that's where my mind was. I imagined myself either stranded in the truck for days before I was found or trying to get out and hike back down the mountain to safety only to be found next spring a big frozen fat jeppsicle. No one would know where I was. Who would miss me? I was sad and getting to feel old with wasted time and depressed with the prospect of not living more in the time I had had so far. I actually had tears running down my cheeks at the thoughts of failure I had and sadness was riding heavy in my heart.
Just as panic was about fully set in the sky cleared, the snow stopped falling and I stopped the truck and looked out over an absolutely beautiful scene of a snowy mountain valley that ranged out below me. In that moment I felt an incredible warmth and sense of comfort, I stepped out of the truck and just marveled at everything around me.
There stretching out below me was that valley I had feared would consume me.The details I could see were amazing. Trees, rocks, rugged mountainside trails cutting back on one another. Even a tiny frozen stream near the bottom, clear to me in a frozen winter's grace I can't truly find the word's to properly describe here now. Off to my left the mountain flattened out for a short span into a clearing there at the top, there were a few trees but mostly just clear, bright white snow untouched by any man.
I had to walk into it. Its that impulse we all have...to be first. Sure I knew other people had be there before, but right then in that time that snow said otherwise. It asked me to tromp out across it and let the world know for just a brief moment this place was mine and no one else's.
So I did, or went to anyway. As soon as I crunched off the road and took my first step onto that pristine whiteness I stumbled and fell to my knees into snow that rose all the way to the middle of my thighs.
Right then for the second time in my life The Lord spoke to me. Not with words but in actions and with presence. I was overcome, I felt as just as I was about to let this moment pass into inconsequentiality in my life I had been brought to my knees to fully see it.
I had despaired, I been fearful and now my path and my way clear. But to either side of that path there were pitfalls, ready to swallow me if I strayed. Just a few minutes ago my mind had raced with thoughts of abandonment,depression, of being lost and I thought I faced a struggle I might not make it through. I realized not only had the weather parted and cleared but in the time I was driving I had not strayed just the few feet to either side of that narrow roadway, an action that would have at best stranded me as I had feared. At that worst the truck could have flipped or slid down the mountainside. There I was in the cold sunshine, my road ahead clear, in that moment I had a clarity to see that with no one there to see or help me I was not alone.
The trip down the backside was far less of an adventure, and it was probably another twenty minutes before I saw another person. They had taken the "long, safe route" around the mountain top. I almost felt sorry for them, they had not my experience. I was sorrowful that they might be driving along without knowing the warmth and protection that I did. Of course, I thought right then, I had no idea of their path or journey. We may all be on the same trip but we don't all follow the same road. I could only be glad for my life and experience, not judgmental of those of others.
Its now that I am faced with another rough time in my life that I think back to that time on the mountain. I had willingly drove into that tiny mountain highway. I had went seeking beauty and adventure only to despair when that beauty and adventure were ready to consume me. Then, as The Shepherd does for the lost lamb, I was guided back to safety and sent on my way.
Now, I am sure will be the same. I need no snowy reminder, my eyes are open.
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