All I wanted to do was find him. At
first I thought he had gone to play music at the church. Maybe he
had gone running, but the dog that goes with him was still here. I
just didn't know where he was...until in the dark of
something-past-seven my daughter called to ask if he had come back.
“Come back from where?”
“That boy is too stubborn, Mom! I
told him not to go. He said he was going fishing for the last time.”
Where exactly had he gone? My first
guess would be on the rocks on the bluff not far from our house. I
went outside, round the back to the steps where my husband was
sitting relaxing in the darkness under the stars. Sensing my
unspoken anxiety he got up and came around. The main door had been
locked since we returned from a meeting, and we had entered the house
through the kitchen door, after an anxious moment of fumbling through
my purse to discover that I did, after all, have the key to that
door. I grabbed my solar flashlight while my husband fiddled with a
battery-powered flashlight which seemed to have a problem. Not a
sense of urgency. I wished he would hurry.
The minutes
ran like a fire racing through a dry coconut branch. Gone and
irretrievable. He was wasting precious time. He just was not
reading me. This, of all times, he chose to be a mechanical
engineer. I saw the flashlight in pieces on the kitchen table and I
was going to break out of this nightmare. I was not going to be
stuck in a dream. He could stay but I was going to find my son!
“I'm going,” I said, and shuffled
down the stairs in reduced night vision, alone, across the road and
down the pasture where the neighbours' goats and sheep huddled down
for the night, the younger kids and lambs sheltering the salty wind
blasts against their warm mothers' coats. It was an area familiar to
me over the three decades I had made that area my home, leaving my
homeland like Abraham and settling in a land that God had shown me.
As my eyes tried to adjust to the
darkness of the bay side and my ears strained for any hints of
movement I heard the wild rushing down the sloping pasture which was
partially eroded by over-grazing. The sound tore past me, claws
scratching and scattering the loose gravel in its path. I guessed,
before I saw, my stumpy jet black dog who had slipped off its chain,
intent on beating me to its perceived maritime adventure.
All of a sudden, what I thought was
familiar territory seemed strangely unfamiliar in the darkness. The
rocks that my husband and I had traversed so many times before in our
earlier years of marriage were at once enclosed by a fence, leaving a
narrow ledge for persons so inclined to have access to the bluff and
the platform below from where generations of casual fisher-persons,
including myself, have thrown hand lines that fastened hooks under
the rushing waves, with eels happily dragging the bait and tangling
the lines beyond salvation.
My dog found him before me. How that
roly-poly dog made its way down the slippery rocks without injury
remains a mystery. His sense of smell served him well. From the top
of the cliff I scoured the platform with the weak beam of my
uncharged solar flashlight. My son flashed back in recognition.
Relief! He was okay. Using the skills acquired through the years, I
climbed down the rocks in the darkness, carefully, as the loose
gravel or a weak piece of rock could at anytime send me hurtling down
to my last earthly expedition.
I made it. Thank God! All the young
man wanted was to spend some time alone in an environment where he
feels at one with his maker, where the therapeutic sounds of the sea
and the tug of the reef species (perhaps) remind him of the dominion
given to him by the Creator over the birds, the fowls, the beasts and
the fishes. At least that's what I concluded.
My husband soon joined us, having
accomplished his engineering task. I stuck around for just a bit and
decided to leave the “boys” to play around with their fishing
line. I began my climb up the cliff but soon discovered that age had
taken its toll on my eyesight. It was easier going down than
climbing up. It was precarious and the darkness just seemed to
saturate my spectacles. I removed them to see if there was any
improvement. Not at all. I was halfway up the cliff and I could not
see where I was going. If I moved to the right there was a good
chance I could fall onto the rocks below. If I continued climbing
straight up, chances are I might end up too far up and away from the
ledge where I was supposed to move across. I could not see to go
back down. I was stuck on a rock. I sat down. I could not help
myself. Cornered. What could I do but wait? I knew the others
would pass my way sometime. They would help me find my way home. At
that time it probably felt, to a lesser degree, like a person whose
house was about to be repossessed because they couldn't find the
mortgage payment; whose business was about to fold up because the
creditors were closing in; whose hope for a cure was slipping into
morphine shots that were already losing their effectiveness; whose
friends had gone and had forgotten.
But God! God was there. No, God IS
there! Is, was, will be. The One Who Was, Who Is, and Is To Come. I
wasn't sure what time they would come but I held on to the belief
that they eventually would. I quit trying to work my way out of the
jam I had gotten myself into and I sat in the dark with my run-down
flashlight, and my faith that I would be rescued.
They did come. They had seen my weak
light searching. They realized that I was stuck, so they packed up
the fishing gear and came to meet me. I was relieved yet amazed to
see how easily they walked across the ledge and helped me find my way
home. In broad daylight I would have seen where I was going. In the
darkness I was lost. Life has its moments like that. All seems dark
and lost. You don't know where to turn—whether to continue,
whether to turn back, whether to hope and whether to give up. God
knows you are on the edge of your cliff. He knows the pressure you
are under. When you feel you can't go on, shine your weak light.
Fill your heart with faith that the good God who cares about a
sparrow, and cares much more about you, will step in after your trial
has worked His purpose in you and deliver you. Surrender. Lessons I
learned in the dark: don't walk by sight ---it will fail you; walk by
faith—it will sustain you.
May God bring you joy in the morning,
with a peace beyond comprehension.
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