Prone to Wander, Part 3
JANUARY 8, 2019
Once upon a very real time, I wandered my kids miles down the wrong trail at a park, and my Lucy took it particularly hard.
I wrote most of her story in another place, but there is a bit more beauty that I didn’t want to leave out.
Once Lucy was able to remember the trail and leave her despair behind, she started to run, and her big brother Sammy quickly caught up with her. “I’ll carry you, Lucy,” he offered, and then he had her hop up on his back. It took about two steps before he realized that he wasn’t going to be able to carry her many more, so he put her back down and then made her a new offer: “I’ll hold your hand, Lucy.” And he did – all the way back to the car he kept pace with her and held her hand. All the way back to the car, he acted like a brother.
People wander, and we are not always able to carry them where they need to go. Sometimes, when we are able, we are not supposed to carry them. But we CAN walk with them, and it matters that we do.
I hope that wherever these words find you, you can think of specific people who will walk with you when your soul is a bit fragile. I hope you have people who have seen you cry and heard you laugh and know better than to define you by either. I hope you have people who tell you hard truths and give you hard hugs, who listen and answer back, and who point you over and over again to Jesus.
And if you don’t…
If you have been hurt and don’t feel strong enough to be vulnerable,
If you have isolated yourself from community,
If you are in a place you’ve never been before and have yet to find your bearings,
If you have been abandoned, If you have gone through a grief so severe that it makes the ones you love feel distant,
If you have fibbed your way to lonesomeness,
If you have just come out of a whirlwind,
If you have lost the one you trusted most,
If any of these lines describe you…
May you cling tightly to Jesus and hold His hand, and may He lead you to people who will hold your hand with Him – people who will act like brothers and sisters.
Once upon a very real time, I wandered off a butterfly trail and got my kids lost with me, and Lucy got a bit more lost than the rest of us. Once upon a very real time, she finally realized the way back and bravely started to walk it. And once upon a very real time, her big brother found her hand and held it tightly, and they both smiled the whole way home.