The last time I felt like this, I was standing on the rim of Haleakala volcano in Maui, Hawaii, waiting to see the sun come up over the other side of the crater.
I didn’t hike 10,000 feet to the volcano’s summit. Instead, I was a terrified passenger in a little rental car being driven up that skinny, scary road by my husband. (This was when Joe first suspected he might have married the bride of Frankenstein.)
Haleakala’s crater is seven miles wide and has trails down and across it, but we were on our honeymoon and weren’t interested in hiking through lots of barren, rocky nothingness. So we didn’t.
All these years later, I don’t feel like I have that choice as I’m standing again on the rim of a crater. This time I know I have to walk through some daunting, rocky terrain to get to the other side.
I shouldn’t be such a drama queen about this. What’s coming up in my life is not a big deal in the overall scheme of things. Not at all. But it’s kind of a biggie in my little world because it’s going to bring pain and inconvenience.
And my, how I do hate pain and inconvenience.
You see, I’m scheduled for two orthopedic surgeries this fall. By the way, did you know there aren’t any “buy one/get one” deals on surgeries? I checked.
In recent years, most of the cartilage and tendons in my body seem to be incessantly humming that old Patsy Cline classic, “I Fall to Pieces.” As a result, surgery number 17 (but who’s counting, right?) will feature my third go-round for torn hip cartilage.
That will be followed a few weeks later by a Humpty-Dumpty procedure to fix a hot mess of torn tendons and who-knows-what-else in my shoulder.
I’m pretty sure there’s a big picture of me with a red circle and slash through it hanging up in the offices of our health insurance company.
And somewhere in that big office building, a little insurance minion is looking at my file and thinking, “Oh brother, not her again.”
I get it. I’m thinking it, too.
I really don’t want to hike through the rocky crater I see spreading out before me. Frankly, it’s embarrassing to be here again.
Everything in me recoils at the thought of the weakness, frustration, humiliation, limitations and pain I’m getting ready to experience for the next several months.
Everything, that is, except the still, small voice in my heart that whispers, “Be still and know that I am God.”
I know that voice. It belongs to the sovereign One to whom, in more holy moments, I offered up my life and said, “It’s Yours, Jesus.”
I always uncomfortably recall those moments when I don’t particularly like what He’s doing with what I’ve given Him.
I didn’t know His path would look like this path, but since it does, I now have some choices to make.
I can’t always choose where I go, but I can choose how I go.
I can go restfully, trusting the heart of the One who goes with me, or I can go fearfully, rebelliously, faithlessly, angrily, and miserably.
I can receive His daily grace, lean on His presence and trust His purposes, or I can clench my teeth, shake my fist, close my heart, and simply endure it.
I should know by now that there are always splashes of unexpected beauty along paths that, at first and from a distance, look like rocky, barren nothingness.
If my moment-by-moment goal is to bless God by crossing this crater graciously, patiently and faithfully, the journey may not be fun, but it can be good.
And I just may see a glorious Sonrise.