I Took The One Less Traveled By

I found something important that time Google Maps got me lost in the middle of nowhere.

This is hard to admit, but after the past year, the landscape of faith feels like unfamiliar territory to me. There are so many layers to this: a deep desire to believe and a concurrent underlying resistance and even revulsion at the idea, and overlaying it all, the general refusal to think too much about it because I don’t want to begin verbalizing questions that could lead me down a mental path that I do not wish to go down.

I want to believe - as I always have - that there is Someone There. I want to believe in Divine Will.

I’m not sure that I do.

But I am sure that I don’t want to be an unbeliever.

Dear G-d, I feel like I need a break from You.

I’ve begun tentatively exploring some of the conflicting thoughts and feelings I have about G-d in this new world I find myself in. I hate it. I hate realizing that something I thought was unshakable wobbles. I hate the disappointment I feel in myself when I catch myself questioning, doubting, concluding, wavering.

Where my uncertainty manifests the most obviously is in the exercise of prayer: it’s hard to ask G-d to intervene these days. I can ask Him to bolster my dear ones with strength. I can ask Him to fill them with courage. But I’ve begun to consistently stop short of asking Him to step in and change the circumstance. I feel uncomfortable asking Him to send rain in a drought, or specific protection in general disaster...or healing for the sick.

There are moments when I excuse myself for that by rationalizing that it’s not that I don’t think He can do those things. It’s just that I wonder if maybe He won’t, and I don’t want to embarrass Him (if such a thing can be said of G-d) by putting Him in a position of having to say no.

But there are other, more raw moments, when I fear that I’m holding back in asking because I deeply doubt that I’m being heard.

Last week, Google maps lured me down a dirt road with the promise of getting me back to GWINRVER the fastest way possible. Less than an hour this way, and although I was surprised by the first turn off onto a dirt road, the robotically calm navigator assured me that in half-a-mile, I would turn right onto what I assumed would be the actual road. It wasn’t, but surely the next one (one mile, then turn left) would link me up with the interstate.

Instead, as a snowstorm oozed over the mountains behind us, google maps let us deeper into a moonscape of decapitated peaks and black cinder fields - eerie remnants of an active volcanic area nine-hundred years old. Every once in a while, we’d pass a commune of ramshackle trailers clustered under the scruffy juniper pine. No utilities appeared to service the area; whoever was out here was interested in being beyond the reach of the outside world. Almost an hour went by. No interstate. Just a dirt road whose condition was worsening by the mile. I navigated away from my map and tried to look up a gas station - we were below a quarter of a tank.

No service.

My belly flipped and I tried to find my original map. Gone. I hadn’t saved it. The dot-that-was-our-minivan was traveling across a blank screen.

The kids freaked out. “We should just try to go back!”

Too far. Turning back would mean driving into the snowstorm just as it was getting dark. We had made too many turns and I wasn’t confident that I could remember which ones we had taken.

“It’s ok, guys. We’re headed in the right direction, let's just keep going. First one to see the pavement gets chocolate chips from my secret stash!” And I kept one hand casually on the wheel and tucked the other one - fist clenched - under my hip.

We drove through more headless mountains, more basalt-strewn fields, shadows growing eeirily long. Then we hit a fork. Both roads ribboned up a gentle rise.

“Two roads diverged in a wood and I,

I took the road less traveled by.

And ever since then, I’ve been hopelessly lost.

Thanks for nothing, Robert Frost!”

I took the right fork and tried to sound optimistic as we rumbled up the hill. Everyone craned their neck to see over the rise.

Nothing. Just that dreaded dirt road wandering across the same endless landscape we’d been traveling across. Not a sign of civilization.

I was speechless for a moment, then put on the brakes and did a u-turn. “I’m pretty sure I saw a roof through the trees before that last fork. Let’s go see if there’s someone there that can help us.”

We have blankets. I rehearsed the worst-case scenario in my mind. We have water we have snacks. Blankets water snacks we’ll be ok…

A tumble-down cluster of decrepit trailers off the road in a clearing. I drove on past. There was a roof back here, high enough to be a two-story house. A house. Permanent structure. That’s got to be a way safer option.

Warnings posted. Beware Dogs. Target Practice Happens Here.

My pre-teen co-pilot looked at me with terror and pulled his pocketknife out of his pocket.

I pulled up to a closed gate posted everywhere with signs. Turn back now! Does anyone know you’re here? Mannequins leaned against the fence. All headless.

“Mommy, it’s not worth it!” my kid wailed.

“Oh, it’s fine. I’m sure with this much bark they can’t have any bite.” But I took the knife he handed me, anyways. I honked several times. Got out of the car. Yelled through the trees, “Hello! Hello! I need some help please!”

Dogs barked eventually. Big dogs. No sign of people. I turned back towards the van and for the first time felt desperation tighten a fist around my stomach.

“Mommy, what are….” the baby started.

“Quiet!” Another kid hissed. “Mommy’s trying to figure out what to do!”

It was totally silent in the car as we sat parked, engine running.

“Abba, I really need You to help me. I got lost. Lost my map. I’m not sure which way I’m supposed to go and I need You to send me a person who can help me find the right way…” I said it all out loud. Automatically. Without pausing to wonder if Anyone was listening or if

The trailer commune. I headed back towards the trailers. As I slowed near the clearing, I saw a pair of boots on the other side of an old truck. I pulled in and rolled down my window as he looked over at me from under an old t-shirt wrapped around his head.

“Dude, you’re a human! You’re totally an answer to prayer.”

I had prayed. Asked for intervention - automatically, instinctually. When all my defenses were down, something was revealed to me: that I rely on there being Someone There. Send me a person to help me find the way.

A gap-toothed smile. “What do you need?”

It was only five more miles, he said. Left at the fork, the one past the cattle guard. Then go through “the Rez.”

“Man, thank you so much. What’s your name?”

“Lance.”

Lance may have been a psycho cult-leader or a crazy conspiracy-theorist or a murderer on the run. Or just a guy who likes to be by himself in the woods all the time. I have no idea what his road was like before or after the particular moment in time when it intersected mine. But thanks to Lance, we all howled with relief when we finally hit the pavement fifteen minutes later and breathed an even deeper sigh after we made it to the reservation’s gas station and filled up our near-empty tank.

Perhaps my deeper feeling of relief came from savoring the feeling of being cared for. Despite the cynical tendencies I have these days, here was evidence that in my deepest depths, He’s the One I know I can lean on. It’s a piece of evidence I’m holding tight to as I continue down this unknown road.

Rain in Slow Motion

I’m in fear of losing a moment; even while I am in it.

My awe and delight are tinged with the knowledge that this moment of bliss is temporary. Transitory views, experiences, encounters: I question their value.

What is it all for?

Moments here, then not here?

Because they are transitory, are they without value?

It’s too hard to accept sometimes - how utterly evanescent this all is - and there’s something in me that willfully fights it. Each time I put pen to paper or lift my camera or pick up the phone to call a dear one and describe the scene to them, I’m desperately trying to capture the fleeting and give it something of forever-ness. When I realize just what I’m doing, there’s a little embarrassment; who do I think I’m kidding? A journal, a picture...they are illusions of endurance. Paper, ink, digital footprints; vanity of vanities.

Kohelet is daily with me.

Just surrender to the moment. That’s the age-old wisdom that I daily try to relearn. But it’s hard and unnatural. If the moment is a mandala, there’s a bitter gritting of the teeth when I reach forward to brush it into the past. I accept intellectually that to resist is a pitifully lost battle. But deeper, in my soul, I don’t understand how to embrace that which disappears even as my arms are wrapped around it.

We left the desert sun above ground and ventured into Carlsbad Caverns last week. I was struck by a towering stalagmite more than five feet in diameter and so tall I had to crane my neck to see it’s reach. It’s the result of one drop of rain that fell into the desert above us and slowly oozed it’s way one thousand feet down, pulling along minerals as it went until - an almost silent drip.

Drip.

Drip.

It’s rain in slow motion: ephemeral desert rains spread over eons, and the darkness of the cavern shelters their dynamic record.

When we came back topside, wouldn’t you know it?

It was raining. Rain in the desert. A storm that flitted by, dropped it’s showers and disappeared almost as soon as it arrived, the dry ground acting like nothing had just happened.

It was a moment. Here. Gone. But a thousand feet down, the rain continues to hollow and carve and build and shape.

I watched a brilliant rainbow arch over us and felt wistful at its too-quick fading; on this plane of reality, I have to make peace with the impermanent. But how overly-simple it would be to assume that this plane of reality is all that really is.

Miss Adventure

Guys, I hiked two miles yesterday.

The last day of the most challenging year of my life and I wanted to do something really memorable, something "big". Our travels took us by way of Guadelupe National Park, home to the highest peak in Texas. Perfect. What a fitting way to finish the year: exhaust myself with a hike to 8700 feet up.

But the Engineer's feet were not up for any hiking. The babies were whiny after the two hour drive, the other ones were talking about nothing but the swimming pool that awaited at our next campsite.

"Guys, we can't do the summit today, but we can do a four-mile with a cool scramble at the top or a two mile that goes to a spring..."

Chaos between then and getting on a trail. The louder contingent wanted to get it over with and go to the pool, which meant the shorter trail and splitting off from the RV down a dusty road. I'd grabbed some lunch stuff to eat the trailhead, but when I spread it all out, there was only enough jelly to make one PBJ and only enough nutella to make one Nutella and Cheddar (I have a weird one in there who swears it's the best), and on my way to chase the wind-escaping roll of paper towels, I found a ranger busily leaving a ticket on our windshield.

"Is there a problem?"

"Yes, you have no receipt in your windshield."

I explained that I had a voucher for the park on my phone.

It had to be printed.

I explained that I'm on the road and don't carry a printer.

She suggested I find a library or something where they could print it. In the middle of the desert. On a Sunday.

Or I could just pay.

At that point, I yelled for all the kids to get to get in the van. I was done. I didn't want to hike. I tried to call the Engineer to tell him we were coming back and just going to get back on the road and get to our campsite...but my phone had no signal.

I gripped the steering wheel and one of the kids looked over at me and said out of the corner of his mouth to the others, "Guys, mommy's really stressed. Nobody say anything."

With five quiet kids stuffed in a park minivan, the silence is deafening. I wrestled with all the feelings. I don't want to hike with cranky kids. I don't want to hike this puny trail when I had a bigger better one in my sights.

Darn it, I don't want to pay that $10 fee!

I pictured the end of the day. I heard this trick from some wise person and I use it often: don't make a decision based on how you feel now, but on how it will make you feel any the end of the day.

I would not be proud of myself for limping to to our campsite at the end of the day...at the end of this upside-down year...with a story like that - that I was so pouty about the loss of the big and flashy adventure that I willfully turned away from the quiet path right in front of me.

So I clenched my jaw, dropped $10 in the fee box, wrangled the kids, and set off.

Last year on my birthday, my mom encouraged me to fully embrace the life tests that are hidden from public view. I reread and savored her words this morning:

"You're not alone, and it's not hidden from God. He walks with you...only wanting your complete and total success. He already knows your biography AND your autobiography (since they are often different), and He is the one that is most impressed with your victories."

Our hike was as discombobulated as it's precursor moments: one kid brought the wrong shoes, the other forgot his jacket, another took every pause as an opportunity to request that we head back now, and halfway through we realized we'd forgotten the backpack with all our survival supplies.

I hiked two miles through some lonely foothills to a hidden spring. That's how I finished my year and I guess I'm proud enough of that.