Journey a While

To me, every journey is a story and vise versa. The smallest treks, such as my 2.6 mile jog three times a week, provide fodder for the adventure of learning to perceive reality. Sometimes I only notice how slow I am, or gather new evidence that my dear old bod is, well, old.

There are days, though, when my inner person discovers a breeze-refreshed, springy meadow of thought in which she dances, oblivious to aches and strains. Ideas coalesce, feelings soar. Yep, it's usually that endorphin thing. But brain-released chemicals have their purpose. Sometimes new vistas of understanding open up beneath my happy feet.

One afternoon in February or March of last year, I traversed a forest trail, my son and his friend somewhere ahead. In my little self the working out of a lot of years' study and frustration was reaching a new summit. For a long time I'd yearned to know what my main priority in this life on earth might be. If I could only find it, I reasoned, most things ought to fall into place beneath the number one entry on my list.

Oh, I had long before concluded who was the priority in life, as far as being the one I sought to know and love. God and his revelations to man, specifically through his son, were supreme as far as being the things I ought to pursue. But, I'd wondered, how in everyday life did I know I was following after God? What could I do to show myself (and possibly others) I was on the right track? I guess I'd made the distinction that it's one thing to decide God is real, but it's another to know God's reality makes a difference.

That afternoon I jogged for the first time in months, having endured an injured-foot winter. The use of my calf and shin muscles, the turf beneath me and the thunk of my day pack against my shoulders enhanced long-dormant energy. I began to skim over tree roots and to leap the bumps along the trail. Joy, sweat, endorphins. Amid their release I knew that I finally knew. The topmost, simple priority I needed, I truly possessed.

I believed.

God had "shown" me things. Experiences, Bible passages, the stories of others had all been part of an ongoing message to the core of me. A message that said I was busted inside; I didn't live up to what I wanted, ultimately, to be. I couldn't be worthy of the God I'd decided was real. And yet God loved me, anyway, and planned all along to bring me to Life. Despite the problem that it looked like would never be solved on this blue sphere, God promised my destiny to be one where I'd live with him. And where I would be fixed, so I'd receive my heart's true desire. I believed that message.

Yes, yes! The illumination in the dim light of that fading day stays with me still.