a way through
The best way to move on is straight through the wilderness. Trying to find a way around just makes the journey longer —
I penned this in a journal of mine, and it eventually made it into a blog I wrote after a particular season of big life change and heartbreak. A week ago, a friend of mine told me he had saved the blog article this was from, and used this line to help create a mood-board for a new film he’s working on now. He told me this line helped put words to something that even now he’s still processing, and creating art around.
I wrote that four years ago.
It was funny he told me this, because while I was in Paris, I kept stopping to photograph the streets you could see through a corridor, the brick archways, the Eiffel tower on a street far away, through buildings, etc. These through-shots would make me stop in my tracks — I couldn’t help it. I kept thinking about this line, about the light on the other side, and about how long it’d take me to go all the way around the street, vs through. To get to that bright, sunlit street on the other side, you have to pass through that dark corridor, but it beats taking the long way — and albeit unnecessary way — all the way around.
Life is like this too. The dark corridor is the necessary pathway to the sunlit otherside.
Even now, I find myself learning what it means to go through and not around. To brace and face, instead of hide or ignore or cover or avoid. It’s hard. It’s painful and scary. The easy way is the long route, but the formative, fastest, albeit most uncomfortable way, is straight through.
God always comforts me with this verse, which sums it all up and shows the way in which He often works — “I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” - Isaiah 43:19.
Rivers in the desert are not normal. They look strange, but yet they provide utmost provision. That scary way through is overflowing with provision.
What does it mean to face things head-on? I think this is often tied to why we don’t slow down. Why rest often seems and feels scary, because a quiet mind and heart will often surface things are are trying to run from. When we are still enough to listen to our emotions, the ones we’ve shoved away cry out to us for attention.
All that to say — it’s okay to go through. I am learning this day by day, as I restart counseling, and try to dig in and face things head on. The wilderness is scary, but it beats 40 years wandering in the desert.
