When The Path Is Lit

I broke my toe once stumbling in the darkness. And all the horrid nightmares I used to have always came in the middle of deep black night.
I am a morning person. I love the light of day. The shroud of night spooks me. I don't like walking where I can't see where to place my feet. I like clear paths, well -lit passageways, goals that may be distant but are still discernible before falling off the edge of the earth.

Yet, most of the time the paths in life are not at all like that. Most of the time I look back on a life that is more like the circuitous wanderings of the Israelites in the desert. The goals I thought I was heading for kept shifting and transforming, or like toppled vases, just shattering. I don't know if I am particularly blind or if everyone's life feels that way.

My second son Matt was the one who as a child bounced off the walls. He never stopped moving and he was always asking for something more, something bigger, something tastier.... and yet, from age 11, Matt wanted to be a lawyer someday. He began reading law books in middle school, and studying about different cases. His exuberant bouncy nature ping-ponged from one activity to the next, but his goal of law-school remained steadfast. He was a typical second child, fun-loving and social and not as committed to hard work as I would have liked, but he was always smart and his native intelligence got him into a very good college. His first semester was a disaster, however, as he chose some very high level classes and bumped up against the shocking demands of reading and writing assignments 4,000 times more than he had ever faced, as well as laundry, getting up early, and tempting diversions everywhere he looked. Not only did it look like his dream of law school was probably over at the end of that horrible first semester, but maybe his dream of graduating. Health issues were multiplying and he was chronically sick and tired, and now battling just to pass, let alone have a GPA that would get him into law school.

It really would have been very easy to give up, or to change his goal. But he didn't. He fought back to the path he had hacked out for himself, and stumbled along, often in darkness. I know there were periods of great despair. Each semester, his grades got better and better. He took the LSAT, the law school entrance exam, while coming down with yet another illness, but did well. Despite his last semester being sick with mono, and very hard classes, he got straight A's. He applied to several law schools. Last night he called to tell me he had gotten his first law school acceptance letter. He is still waiting on the others, but he was thrilled. It is a top 30 school, and not his first choice, but he would happily go there. I had not realized I'd been holding my breath for the past ten years for my son the dreamer, til I let it out with that phone call.

Night inevitably follows day. There are periods of darkness no matter how hard we try to hang on to the sun. Sometimes I just take it by faith that God is there, lighting the way. I have to just huddle against my fear, and know that morning is coming. And when it does, it is always most beautiful when the sun is blazing after a long period of gloom.

The Lord went in front of them in a pillar of cloud by day, to lead them
along the way, and in a pillar of fire by night, to give them light.
Exodus 13:21