It Would Have Been Enough

It would have been enough.

That line is cited over and over and over again in the Jewish tradition of singing "Dayenu," which is the English transliteration of the Hebrew word דַּיֵּנוּ.  The word essentially means "it would have been enough for us," or "it would have sufficed."  During the Seder meal, this song is sung traditionally after the telling of the exodus and just before the explanation of the Passover.  It includes 15 stanzas, and after each line, they speak the word "dayenu."  I first heard Beth Moore explain this content a little bit when she spoke this past January at the Passion Conference in Atlanta, Georgia, and by the time she got done speaking, I was nearly undone as the weight of what all of this meant began to take root in my heart.    

Five Stanzas of Leaving Slavery
1) If He had brought us out of Egypt.
2) If He had executed justice upon the Egyptians.
3) If He had executed justice upon their gods.
4) If He had slain their first-born.
5) If He had given to us their health and wealth.

Five Stanzas of Miracles
6) If He had split the sea for us.
7) If He had led us through on dry land.
8) If He had drowned our oppressors.
9) If He had provided for our needs in the wilderness for 40 years.
10) If He had fed us manna.

Five Stanzas of Being With God
11) If He had given us Shabbat.
12) If He had led us to Mount Sinai.
13) If He had given us the Torah.
14) If He had brought us into the Land of Israel.
15) If He built the Temple for us.

It would have been enough.  It would have been enough if God had done all of these things for us.  It would have been enough for us if He had simply stretched out his mighty hands time and again.  It would have been enough for us if he had pulled us out of the pits we find ourselves in so often. It would have been enough for us if he had kept performing miracle after miracle.  It would have been enough.  

But was it?  Was it really enough just to part the Red Sea?  Was it really enough just to provide the manna?  Was it really enough just to build the temple?  Was all of that really enough?

Because what good are the parted waters if I don't have the Living Water?  What good is the manna from the skies if I don't have the Bread of Life?  What good is the temple if He is not dwelling with me?

I love it when Beth Moore gets to rolling on this particular topic at the Passion Conference. She says, "Jesus knows it would not have been enough.  Oh no, it would not have been enough, had Jesus just been born to a virgin.  It would have been miraculous, but it would not have been enough.  Had Jesus come to speak the very words of God, it would have been the Word made flesh among us, but it would not have been enough.  Had Jesus caused the deaf to hear, the blind to see, the mute to speak, it would not have been enough.  Had he called forth demons from the tortured and oppressed and possessed, no indeed, it would not have been enough. Had he only raised the dead, it would not have been enough.  Had he been scorned, mocked, spit upon, and bruised and not bled one single drop, it would not have been enough.  And let me tell you something, nobody knew that that night [Passover night] better than Jesus, because that particular night was precisely on the calendar for the reason that it was not enough!"     

So, no, it would not have been enough.  And that's why on this day, on "Good" Friday, we look to a cross and we look to a crucified man and we acknowledge that everything from the exodus out of Egypt to the miracle of manna and everything else in between and since would not have been enough.  But God, in his infinite and unfathomable wisdom, grace and sovereignty sent his one and only Son who stretched out his arms and said, "I am enough."

A Home

I remember sitting in the hotel parking lot, staring out the windshield, knowing I would sleep in perfect peace that night, but some woman somewhere was living in utter fear of the night that was to come.  I knew I would go to sleep that night and be free of nightmares.  I knew I would go to sleep and be free of shame.  And I knew some woman somewhere would not have that luxury.

I was spending my Saturday a couple of weeks ago volunteering with an organization called S.O.A.P. - Save Our Adolescents from Prostitution - whose mission it is to distribute bars of soap to local hotels, which list a hotline number a victim can call should she find herself being trapped in human trafficking.  Theresa Flores, the founder of S.O.A.P. and a survivor of human trafficking herself, facilitated the training that morning, explaining to attendees the staggering statistics of human trafficking around the country.  (Yes, it really does happen here domestically.  This isn't some far off third-world problem.  Ohio happens to rank fifth in the nation for human trafficking, with Toledo ranking third.)

The outreach was targeting the Arnold Sports Festival, which was just this past weekend - and it's known to have high amounts of human trafficking.  Any major event where there is a large gathering of people, predominantly men, the numbers spike.  The Super Bowl.  Daytona 500.  The Memorial Tournament.  Republican National Convention.  Democratic National Convention.  Kentucky Derby.  Detroit Auto Show.

But Theresa also explained some of her own story and the stories of many other women she had encountered. And as I was sitting in that hotel parking lot, thinking over all I had learned and thinking of their stories, picturing their faces, J.R.R. Tolkien popped into my head.  Ah, the brilliance of Tolkien at just the right moment.  I thought particularly of the movie The Hobbit.  In the story, Bilbo Baggins is this quiet, unassuming hobbit who really just wants to be left alone to tend his garden, read his books and generally stay far away from adventure.  Through a series of events, he gets wrapped up in this journey with a host of dwarves and Gandalf, the wizard.  The dwarves have lost their land and vast amounts of treasures to the evil dragon, Smaug, and they are on a mission  to get it back.  The dwarves don't really trust Bilbo or really know what purpose he serves on the journey, and at one point their leader, Thorin Oakenshield, questions Bilbo and his motives, to which Bilbo responds:

"Look, I know you doubt me, I know you always have. And you're right... I often think of Bag End. I miss my books, and my armchair, and my garden. See, that's where I belong, that's home. That's why I came back... 'cause you don't have one, a home. It was taken from you. But I will help you take it back if I can."

And as I sat there thinking, feeling a little overwhelmed by the magnitude of the situation, the horror that 27 million people around the globe are caught up in human trafficking, I thought, "Who am I to do something?  My life has been relatively easy, relatively pain-free.  I don't know what it's like to be kidnapped and forced into sexual slavery.  I don't know what it's like to be blackmailed and brainwashed, thinking my family will be murdered if I ever speak out and try to fight my way out the situation I find myself in.  I don't know what it's like to have my body tortured and destroyed by those that thirst for control, power and lust."  I mean let's be frank here - I'm a young, white, privileged, well-educated, American woman, who in all honesty has had an easy road to walk.  I know that.  And that's just the lie the devil wants us to buy, the lie that because we can't relate or can't fully change the situation, then we just shouldn't bother at all, that we shouldn't get our hands dirty, that it's someone else's problem. Just be quiet...you don't have a voice in this matter.  What do you know?  He's so good at whispering the lies.  

What a load of baloney.       

Yeah, sometimes I want to be like Bilbo and just honestly and selfishly admit, "You know what?  You're right.  I don't always understand.  And I do think of home.  I like my safety and comfort and self-confidence and peace.  That's where I belong."

But I simply cannot leave it there.

Because there is also that moment when I want to say to these women caught up in trafficking, or to the children I have seen face-to-face so often in Kenya, to look them in the eye and say with a touch of fierceness in my voice, "But that's why I came back - because you don't have that. You don't have a sense of emotional safety, you don't have a sense of comfort, a sense of self-confidence, a sense of peace, a sense of dignity, a sense of home.  It was taken from you.  But I will help you take it back."

I will help you take it back.  I will help you take back your dignity.  I will help you take back your confidence.  I will help you take back everything that was ever stolen from you.  And I'm not just talking about tangible possessions here, I'm not just talking about homes and clothes and finances.  I'm talking about the very things that define us at our core, our very identities.  I'm not saying in a I-am-your-hero-here-to-save-the-day kind of way, but in a way where we enter into other people's lives with grace and humility, as their co-equal, not as their superior.  

As Christ-followers, the hallmark of our lives should be the mission to take back that which is lost or stolen.  It should be our mission to restore the years that the locust have eaten (Joel 2:25).  It should be our mission to give people back their dignity and self-worth - whether orphan, alien, widow, man, woman, child.  It should be our mission to reclaim ground that Satan has claimed for himself, for evil.  We should be rising up in righteous anger far more often than we currently are.  Things like this - injustices like human trafficking - need to rub us the wrong way far more often.  It needs to get under our skin.  It needs to compel us to action, not indifference.

The movie Machine Gun Preacher follows the life of Sam Childers, who took a very rocky road to building an orphanage in war-torn Sudan.  At one point he said, "I'm afraid that someday I'll close my eyes to all of this and make it someone else's problem."

Every day we rub shoulders with people who have had their homes stolen from them, so to speak.  It's your job to make these wrongs your problem.  It's your job to make it right.  It's your job to help them take it back.  Even if you have to slay a dragon or two to make it happen.

Broken, Broken, Broken

We have doctors because of broken bodies.  We have counselors because of broken minds.  We have mechanics because of broken cars.  We have divorce attorneys because of broken marriages.  We have foster homes because of broken families.  We have entire prison systems because of broken people.  We have repairmen because of broken pipes and broken TVs.  We have broken systems to replace other broken systems.  Broken, broken, broken.  All of it.

We live and move and find ourselves living in a fundamentally broken world.  It's inescapable, unavoidable.  And for whatever reason, that thought is crashing down around me here lately. (Although, clearly it's a recurring thought considering I wrote about it similarly maybe six months ago.)  Probably because I have to stare at it every day I go to work now, where I feel like all I do is think about broken people and broken systems and hope to figure out a way to make them less broken.  A vast majority of us spend our lives righting wrongs, in some way, shape or form.  And if our jobs or our lives aren't directly involved in fixing what's broken, then we are at the very least operating within the confines of broken relationships and broken structures and broken systems, working alongside broken people.

It gets overwhelming at times.  I feel like I'm fighting an uphill battle, one where nothing ever seems to change.  I look at the statistics for orphans in Africa - one site says 53.1 million orphans in sub-Saharan Africa alone - and I think, "It's never going to change."  We have countless non-profits and NGOs at work and there never seems to be a dent in the problem.  I look at the statistics for some of the work I do now - however many hundreds of thousands of children in Ohio - and I'm reaching a couple hundred who might have autism.  And I still want to think, "It's never going to change."  It all seems insurmountable.  I get bogged down, wanting to chuck all efforts, telling myself because I can't save them all, then I shouldn't bother saving any. (I know, I'm quite the pessimist.  Bad habit.  I'm working on it.)

Yes, the reality is that it's never going to get any easier.  On this side of heaven, I'm never going to live and function in a world that is fully whole and healthy and without blemish.  But that is never an excuse for me to not do something.  How easy would it have been for Jesus to say, "I can't save them all - not all of them will embrace me - therefore I shouldn't bother saving any of them.  Let's ditch the cross.  It's a wasted effort."  That thought occurred to me earlier tonight while driving home from work and I got so overwhelmed I was nearly in tears.  Because I'm so grateful that Jesus came back for this one.  He came after me.  He didn't leave me behind and say, "Figure it out for yourself.  You broke, you fix it."  It's completely absurd when I think about how outrageous and scandalous that is.  He came after the one.  I think of the four friends who brought their paralyzed friend to Jesus.  They dug a hole in some stranger's roof, for crying out loud, just to get their friend to Jesus.  What if I lived with that kind of courage, just for the sake of one person?      

“Suppose one of you had a hundred sheep and lost one. Wouldn’t you leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the lost one until you found it? When found, you can be sure you would put it across your shoulders, rejoicing, and when you got home, call in your friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Celebrate with me! I’ve found my lost sheep!’ Count on it—there’s more joy in heaven over one sinner’s rescued life than over ninety-nine good people in no need of rescue."  Luke 15:4-7 (MSG)   

Jesus left the ninety-nine - heck, he left the legions in heaven - and he came after the one. I likewise have to go after the one, whomever it is.  Yes, we're all a little broken.  Yes, we live in a broken world with broken systems, broken governments, broken people, broken relationships.  But I've got to go after the one.  I don't want to spend my days in hopeless defeat, staring at all that is bad in this world, feeling like it's all a lost cause.  I'll spend the rest of my life paralyzed if that's what I choose.  Somehow, someway, I've got to take courage from Jesus and go back for the one who is lost - in my job, in my family, in my church, wherever.  Because Jesus came back for this one who was lost.

"Do I still think there will be a day when all wrongs are made right, when our souls find the completion they are looking for?  I do.  But when all things are made right, it won’t be because of some preacher or snake-oil salesman or politician or writer making promises in his book.  I think, instead, this will be done by Jesus.  And it will be at a wedding.  And there will be a feast."  - Donald Miller    

    

Conversations with Dirt

I found myself standing out in the drizzle and cold in a small town in Virginia this past December, staring down at a small plot of earth, having a conversation in my head with the dirt and the body that was now buried six feet below.  At various points, I wasn't sure if it was teardrops or rain getting in my eyes.  It was so compulsory, so involuntary, the conversation that ran through my head.  But it was like every other conversation I had with Jon when he was alive - simple, comfortable, without effort.

And in that moment, as I stood over that gravestone marker, I realized how much I still missed my friend and how much I still wished he was here.  

It will be a year ago tomorrow that I got that dreaded phone call from Pastor Brad.  "He's gone, Courtney."  Blast it all, Brad.  Don't tell me that.  Not today.  Not now.  Don't tell me my friend is gone.  My keys were nearly in hand.  I was just coming to visit him at the hospital.  Don't tell me he's gone.     

There have been a lot of moments since then when I have found myself absentmindedly thinking, "Ah, I should remember to tell Jon about that."  Or maybe I'll think to myself, "Jon would find that funny."  I watched The Civil Wars perform on the Grammy's last year.  I wanted to tell Jon about it.  I saw a sign last week for the first game of the Blue Jackets' hockey season.  I wanted to text him to see if he had bought tickets yet.  I still watch The Big Bang Theory and laugh and wonder if Jon would have found it funny, too.  I've watched countless movies and told myself about all of the details that Jon would have picked up on, the ones I always seemed to miss.  I ran my finger across the books on my shelf and counted all the books that Jon randomly bought for me over the years - War Horse, South, Touch the Top of the World.  

Those memories are bittersweet, but I'm grateful I have them nonetheless.  They are marks of a friendship and a friend that I will forever remember and be shaped by.  The sadness still comes on occasion - and I've learned that it's okay.  I've learned to welcome it with open arms.  I've learned to not apologize for the tears when I have conversations with others about Jon and what he meant.  I've accepted the reality that I'll probably never make it through "Never Once" by Matt Redman ever again without thinking of Jon or wanting to cry.   

And I know I'm not alone in that grief or sadness.  What his family has experienced - is experiencing - eclipses whatever I might feel.  But in the end - we all know the same reality: we'll see Jon again.  Heaven isn't some pipe dream, not something we're wishing is true.  It's real.  And my friend is there.  Walking. Dancing. Celebrating. Rejoicing.  And as much as I want my friend here - I want him there more. 

We are not people without hope.  Our hope is in Jesus Christ and Him alone.  And we'll cling to Him and run to Him when the waves of life sweep over us, threaten to send us tumbling down to the abyss, when the memories get to be just a bit too much.

And I'll cling to Him even when I find myself having a conversation with a piece of dirt.          

You Never Have Another Best Friend...

"It was amazing. I do not at all understand the mystery of grace - only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us. It can be received gladly or grudgingly, in big gulps or in tiny tastes, like a deer at the salt. I gobbled it, licked it, held it down..." - Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies

I was like deer at the salt on Monday night at our church's monthly house of prayer.  Huddled between two of the godliest women I know, we drank deeply of that grace and received it gladly.  

I have the awesome privilege of being surrounded by a lot of amazing women and have had that privilege for a long while.  One of those mysteries of grace that I'll receive gladly, in big gulps. I get a little stunned when I look back over my life, especially from college until now, and I tick off on my fingers all of the women that I hold so dear.  Mentors, confidants, partners-in-crime, comforters, co-sojourners.  I can't even begin to write a list out of all the women I think are so priceless.  I wish that all could be surrounded by such a gathering of wise, wise friends.  

But tonight I especially want to esteem two of my dearest friends in this season of life - Jill and Alex.  I'm sure if you know me very well, you hear me talk about these two women a lot (and some of you probably even get tired of hearing me talk about them.  My apologies!).  But it's because they have played/are playing such an integral role in who I am as a Christ-follower.  Alex's fiancé Jed, now (affectionately?) refers to us as The Tribe.  "I'll just call you The Tribe." "Oh, The Tribe is meeting again." "You just saw each other less than twelve hours ago, what else could you possibly have to talk about??"  Lots, Jed, lots.  We're women.  There is always something to be said.  

As I sat at the house of prayer quietly praying over so many things the Lord kept bringing to my mind, sweet Jill walks over and, with tears in her eyes, asks if she can pray for me.  So her and I begin praying.  I'm sure we've got eye make-up streaming down our faces by the time she's done.  Then Alex walks over and sits down.  Also crying.  So then we begin sharing some Scripture and just hashing out some things that had been happening recently, things we were praying for.  Then I start praying for Alex.  Then I pray for Jill.  And by the time that all got done, we really were messes.  Runny noses, not enough tissues and too many tears.  

It's moments like that when I think, "This is what this looks like - to intercede, to come alongside, to draw nearer to one another and to Jesus, and to embrace the tears and runny noses."  Life is messy and complicated as it is.  We each are facing series of circumstances, which certainly are not unique to mankind, but to us they seem to leave us with gaping holes in our hearts - relationships from our past that haunt us in ways we didn't see coming, ones that threaten to knock us over, battles with insecurities and worthlessness, thoughts of some-day and not-yet marriages, confusion over next steps.  

But it's in those moments that grace shows up.  Sometimes it comes in the form of encouraging notes, unexpected phone calls, bouquets of "just-because" flowers.  But this time it showed up with skin on, in the form of two women who I esteem highly and who are crazy about Jesus.  I love the line from the deleted scenes portion of P.S. I Love You, when John says, “You never have another best friend like the first one you have when you’re old enough to know who you are in life.”  And it's so true.  But in this case, "friend" happens to be plural for me - "friends."  Because I'll never have other best friends like these first ones I've had when I was finally old enough to know who I was in life.  Well, maybe that's not entirely accurate because I'm still figuring out a lot about my life and those first best friends extends well beyond Jill and Alex.  But nevertheless, I'll welcome the grace that God so graciously provides.  I'll keep gobbling it and holding it down as best I can. 

Ixnay on the Resolutions

I really don't like new year's resolutions.  They are completely worthless in my mind, at least for me personally.  They are not conducive to my personality - I'm either going to do something or I'm not.  I'm not going to sit down and make a list of things I hope to accomplish.  I've tried them in the past and the minute I fail, I give in to self-condemnation and swear them off anyway so I figure why bother?  I'm better off by just quietly determining to do something rather than making a list of goals.

There is one thing, though, that I keep coming back to when I think about this coming year.  It's a prayer from John Piper's book Seeing and Savoring Jesus Christ. (And because Piper is incredibly gracious, you can download the entire book in PDF format from his website - he's got oodles of other amazing free resources, too, including many of his other books in their entirety.)  A friend from college gave it to me years ago and it ended up being one of those books that has more things underlined than it doesn't.  At the conclusion of each chapter he wrote, he included a prayer.  I pulled it out a few weeks ago because I wanted to include a line from it in a gift I was giving to a friend.  I think this prayer is ultimately what I want for 2013 - for myself, for those around me, for my church.  Maybe it's one you'll spend praying for the year as well.

Almighty and merciful God, we exult in the reflection of your might and mercy in your Son, our Lord, Jesus Christ.  We rejoice in the strength of his lion-like power and in the tenderness of his lamb-like meekness.  We take heart from his incomparable combination of excellencies.  It reassures us that there is none like him, and that he is not a mere man like others.  O grant us, in our brash indifference, to tremble before the Lion of Judah and to humble ourselves under his fierce holiness. And grant us, in our brokenness and fear, to gather courage from the lion-like Lamb.  Oh, how we need the whole Christ!  Open our eyes to see the fullness of his excellence.  Remove the lopsided and distorted images of your Son that weaken our worship and lame our obedience.  May the power of the Lion and the love of the Lamb make our faith in Christ unshakable.  So deliver us from small dreams and timid ventures and halting plans.  Embolden us.  Strengthen us.  Make us love with fierce and humble love.  Let us share the confidence of the Lion of Judah that gave him the will to die like a Lamb and rise in everlasting joy.  And in it all, grant that all might see the glory of Christ and that you might be honored through him.  In Jesus' name we pray, amen.

Here's to 2013 being a year when we love with fierce and humble love.

Merry Christmas from Kenya

Dear Auntie,

God gave His Son Jesus Christ so that we may have eternal life.

You gave sacrificially so that I may be raised on Rafiki Village Kenya.

Thank you for sponsoring me.  I wish you a happy Christmas.   Madam helped to look for a Christmas card with African angels.  Hark the herald angels sing, glory to the newborn King!

I think you have snow.  We have sunshine here.

Happy Christmas again.

Yours sincerely,

Lilian

Yes, indeed, Lilian.  God gave his son Jesus Christ, a baby who grew to be a man and would give his life for the whole wide world.  A man who wrapped his arms around all of humanity and said, "I AM the answer to every question you've ever had.  I AM all that you've been searching for.  I AM all that you've ever longed for.  I AM the great I AM.  Don't miss it."

And yes, we do have snow here.  :)

I Can't Fathom

I was trying to corral a dozen or so 5-year olds on Sunday morning at church and in the midst of it, Shade walks over, taps me on the shoulder and says with the kind of grin that only a young child can display, looks me right in the eye and says, "I love you."

I was so caught off guard by his announcement that I stuttered for a moment.  I don't know that he was one of the children that had ever gravitated toward me in the past or me to him, but for whatever reason, he felt compelled to whisper those words to me on that Sunday morning, without prompting, without reason.

And in the ensuing moments, I thought, "How?"

How could someone see a little child like this, like Zachariah, like Ava, like Abby - and so senselessly and needlessly destroy their little lives?  It's inconceivable.  Mind-blowing.

And maybe if I'm really honest, I wondered how God could let this happen.  Because I want to blame somebody, I want to get mad at somebody.  And sometimes it's just easiest to blame God.

Friday afternoon was the first time I found myself in a long, long time opening the doorway to a slightly dark and deep hole of bitterness and resentment. It's a terrifying feeling, especially once you've been there long ago and vowed never to go back there.  I know what that bitterness and resentment is like.  I know what it's like to shake your fist at God and demand answers, demand he tell you "why", demand that he make it all right somehow.  And after making such demands all those years ago, I wound up in a pit so dark and deep that I learned I don't ever want to go back there again.

And I felt those sworn-off sentiments rise up on Friday as I watched the news and read the headlines and heard the radio broadcasts. I felt them bubbling up from deep within, questioning all over again, wondering if I really knew God at all.  

I know everybody is commenting. I know a lot of people are reeling from the pain and the horror.  I am one among many.  So I don't know that I have anything new to say.

All I know is this - at the end of the day, even when I don't understand all that happens around me, even when I don't understand the heinous, heinous evil - I know and believe that God still sits on his throne.  And I know that Satan is on the mission of a lifetime to do everything he can to destroy life.  He came to steal, kill and destroy, make no mistake about it.  But he knows his end is nearing and that makes him all the more desperate.

But if Satan is desperate then God is obsessed.  He's obsessed with his people, the ones he called unto himself, created for himself.  Not one life ends without his knowledge, without his notice.  He is not some calloused God sitting on his throne, unaware of all that is happening here on this little blue marble.

He is here and he is not silent.  And that's what I'm holding on to.



"Sometimes I don't feel like singing to God...I know that my circumstance in this season doesn't change that God is still God.  It doesn't change what God called me to be here or what he has called me to do.  He's still on the throne of heaven and he still rules and he's still bigger than everything I'm facing." 

Nice Try

Forgive me for making this the second post in a row about Cheez-Its, but this one was too funny to pass up. My friend Jenna had asked me awhile ago if I had ever received the letters she sent to me in Kenya.  I told her I hadn't but the Village Director had my forwarding address and would send me any items that came after my departure.

Well, her letters finally arrived today.  About 3 months after she initially sent them.  

And maybe a little worse for the wear.  Apparently Cheez-Its don't hold up very well during international flights. I never would have guessed.  

This is what Cheez-It dust looks like. 

It was a valiant effort, my friend.  It almost worked.  :)

Road Trips and the Best Sunrise That Never Was

Hiking up the trail near Linville Falls

"You have never taken a solitary road trip across country? I mean everybody's got to take a road trip, at least once in their lives. Just you and some music."  - Elizabethtown

Road trips are good for the soul.  They are good for my soul, anyway.  Just me and some music and maybe some Louie Giglio sermons.  I'm used to the drive out to Missouri - a straight shot on I-70, but this time I took a meandering drive down to North Carolina to see my sweet southern friend, Kristen.  There were, of course, a few moments as I'm driving through some obscure parts of western Virginia or North Carolina when I thought to myself, "I am going to die out here.  And nobody is ever going to find my body."  It's not a comforting or pleasant thought.  But I tried to banish those thoughts and focus instead on the stunning countryside.  But that also was hard to do when it seems there isn't a single road in this state that goes straight for more than a quarter of a mile or has a sign to tell you where the heck you are.  I just kept hearing one of the characters from the movie Twister in my head when Helen Hunt was yelling at him to find a particular road, "Find this road...it's probably like Bob's Road..." Drives me crazy.  Every time I go away somewhere, I'm always reminded of how much I love my cornfields and straight roads back in Ohio.

I finally made it to NC alive and in one piece and Kristen and I set off on our adventures.  First, I took a tour of Samaritan's Purse, which was quite inspiring.  After that we spent the day hiking (I use that term loosely since I'm horribly out of shape and not much of a hiker) and the weather was simply perfect (this would not be true by the time I left the great state of North Carolina).  We drove up to Wiseman's View to overlook the Linville Gorge and came back down the mountain to drive up another mountain.  Lots of mountains that day.


Linville Falls

On Saturday, we trekked down to Asheville to go to the Biltmore Estate, which is one of my very favorite places in the whole wide world.  Maybe it's the history-lover in me, but I just can't seem to get enough of that place.  We spent the night at Ridgecrest, which is the conference center where Kristen and I met five years ago when we were both summer staff.

Here's where my little story takes a turn.  Kristen loves hiking.  I don't harbor a strong affection for it, especially at 6 a.m.  But she said she wanted to hike Rattlesnake, which is one of the tougher trails at Ridgecrest, early Sunday morning to see the sunrise.  I thought, "Well, I don't particularly want to get up at the crack of dawn, but I also am not letting my friend hike up to the top of a mountain all by herself."  

She's telling me how beautiful it will be and that will be worth getting up this early to go see the sunrise, etc, etc, etc.  I'm holding loosely to that hope.  The plan was to get up at 6, hike for maybe an hour or so, be there in time to watch the colors change and then the sun was to be up by 7:49 a.m.

So, off we go at 6 a.m.  It's pitch black, extremely foggy, and I look like I'm ready to hibernate for the winter, I've got so many layers on.  All I've got is a little tiny LED flashlight and she's got the flashlight on her phone.  We clearly didn't think very far in advance when it came to preparing for this hike.  We drive up to the trailhead, roll out of the car and try to find our way in the dark.  This is the second point of the weekend when I thought to myself, "I'm going to die out here.  And nobody is ever going to find my body."  But I also thought that nobody is ever going to find my body because it'll be stuffed into some black bear's den for the winter.  

We start hiking and it's still so black and foggy out that you can't see but maybe 20-30 feet in front of you.  I often questioned our wisdom in doing this hike by ourselves in the pitch black.  But then that's when the little reminder dings in my head, "Courtney, you just flew all the way to East Africa by yourself, for crying out loud.  I think you can handle this one, too."  The leaves were up to our ankles and they got wetter and slicker the higher up the mountain we went, which made for some near-face-first-falls. It's eerily quiet other than us shuffling our feet along through the piles of leaves.  I'm huffing and puffing my way up the face of this mountain and Kristen occasionally asked if I was cursing and swearing at her yet.  Not yet.  

The going is somewhat easy for awhile until we near the summit, then rocks and boulders appeared everywhere and it got a bit tougher.  It's still dark and foggy, with no signs of sunrise colors.  We reach a higher point and decide to stop until we can get some more light because we're not even sure we can find the right path for the summit.  So, we hunker down in the middle of a rock outcropping and wait for the sun to come up.

It ain't happening.  

It's about 7 by the time we get to this little spot and our hopes are fading of seeing the sunrise.  Heck, we could barely see back down the trail we just came up, let alone anything resembling a sunrise.  At this point, we're nearly in stitches laughing about it all, one of those moments in life where you think, "I can't believe I just got my fanny out of bed for this."  We would get quiet for a moment or two and then you could hear the laughter bubbling up from the other person and the giggling would start all over again.  And maybe I was secretly loving it all, finding freedom and relief in this absurd little adventure.

It's nearly 7:49 by now and this is still all we can see:           

          

That's not blue skies you're looking at, by the way.  Nothing but fog.   

We decide to call it quits on the hike and head back down.  Clearly the sun is not willing to fight its way through this fog and delight us with her colors this morning.  Back down the mountain we go.  

And what do you think the skies look like by 9 a.m.?  Sunny and brillant blue.

Figures. 

But maybe that's what makes the best stories, the best memories - the times when you hike all the way up a mountain to see a sunrise that never comes, don't get eaten alive by bears or fall off the face of a cliff.

Yeah, I'd say roadtrips are good for the soul. And so are 6 a.m. hikes.