“Wherever you go, there you are.”

– Thomas à Kempis 

Whether you like it or not, you’re here. Today. What brought you here? Well, the answer is: a lot of things. It may have been a narrow, winding road of difficulty that brought you to where you are today. Maybe you had to search for your footing and felt afraid for a lot of it. Maybe it was wider and easier to find your steps, and you look back and think,”Wow that went by fast.” Or maybe you are thinking, “I’ve only gone THAT far???” Either way, you’re here. Our roads have crossed. Let’s pause together for a minute and take a breath.

Go ahead. Take a deep breath. Yes, really. A little oxygen won’t hurt. Maybe take another deep breath – slower this time.

I’m sure some would look at my road and say it was an easy one compared to others. After all, I live in the United States where women have a lot more freedoms and opportunities than in other places around the world. I have a career. I have good (not perfect) relationships with my family. Yet, I’ve had my share of sorrow and grief as well.

Some of our “journey” is of our own choosing. Some of it is what happens to us that we can’t control. So how do we get to where we want to go when the road turns or crumbles underneath our feet and starts to take us in another direction?

We look up – that’s how. “Don’t look down!” is the best advice for someone going across a narrow, elevated beam or bridge. Getting our focus off of the “what ifs” and onto the goal ahead is simple, but it isn’t easy. So I’m here as a voice to help your gaze upward so you can take another step forward on the path to wherever it is you want to go. I’ll offer my hand to hold or shoulder to lean on if you need it. No one should walk alone.

I’m not a runner, so I’m not speaking from any running experience here, but as an observer I can recognize the concepts of training, and the “oops” moments I’ve been in and seen others in where we realize we jumped in way over our heads. The key to finishing a marathon (or any long process) is to just keep going. If you can’t run, walk. If you can’t walk, crawl. If you can’t move, rest. And then get moving again. You might not get there in the time you wanted, but those who just don’t quit can at least celebrate at the end of the finish line when they get there. Imagine the character Rocky Balboa at the end of the move Rocky saying “I did it!” with the blood and the bruises. In all the cases I can think of, it wasn’t pretty, but they made it.

And those who go the farthest don’t do it alone. Without a cheerleader or an honoree, a lot of the heroic stories and finishes don’t get made. So it’s ok if your road is rocky, crooked, bumpy, or even completely broken in parts. If you’ve had pain, rejection, or trauma, you can allow it to fuel you instead of cancelling you. You don’t have to prove anything to anyone else, but you owe it to yourself to keep going.

Someone once told me they didn’t understand why some people crumble and break after tragedy, while others are inspired to come back even stronger – letting the tragedy fuel them toward recovery and resilience. Simply presenting this mystery was enough for me to think deeper about my own life. I was in the middle of what I understood at that time to be my greatest tragedy. And because I love a good analogy, I’ll point to the proverb of the carrot, the egg, and the coffee bean. In boiling water the carrot gets soft, mushy and falls apart. The egg becomes hard and awful on the inside. The coffee bean gives off an amazing aroma. So which one will you be? Will you stay on the broken road and plod on to recovery? It might not look like what you first imagined, but if you keep going you get the opportunity to see the beauty of redemption.

Once again, Isaiah 35 comes to mind. It’s one of the many beautiful examples of the promises of God. In Psalms we see imagery of a lamp on our path or a light on a hill. He never promises to take away the work, the hardships, the pains of this life, but He does promise to redeem it. Ever since the first sins in the Garden of Eden, God has always had a plan for that, and He instills hope in us to keep going until the end of the broken road we’re on. The broken pieces of the road, the difficult parts of the journey are not the end. It’s not how the story ends.