On Monday, four months to the day after his open heart surgery, we stood at the base of the logging road. It was also six months to the day since our last trip to the top of this forest road that we’ve come to know and that has come to know us. Every trip up that road had prepared us for the medical, physical, and spiritual journey we’ve been on since discovering my geologist’s need for the surgery. It’s not lost on us that every trip up prior to his surgery, unbeknownst to us, could have caused a major cardiac event. That it didn’t is a cause for the deepest kind of gratitude as we find ourselves ready to make our way to the top again, and hopefully again and again and again until some day when we can’t.
It was a rainy day, mist and clouds hanging close to the tree tops. After a few quiet moments we started up the trail. The steepest part of the trail is found right there at the get go, reminding us that slow and steady will win almost any race, including recovery from major surgery. Every step felt like a gift. It was as if the ground beneath our feet welcomed us back, and the trees on either side greeted us. It felt like coming home.
Starting out that morning, neither of us expected to get to the top. We’d simply go as far as his body suggested, and then head back down. Except that we didn’t. It took over an hour—about twice as long as it usually takes to get up there—but we eventually found ourselves standing next to the stump where we’ve set our thermos of coffee for the last five years. It felt like turning the page to a new chapter of the story that is ours. And so much of that story can be found on that logging road. It has been our faithful companion and witness for all of the conversations, laughter, tears, questions, arguments, silence, prayers, and plain old good, hard physical work that have gotten us to where we are today, and will be faithful to ready us for whatever is to come tomorrow.
I think it’s a true thing that whatever it is that got us here will be faithful to get us there. Wherever there is over the rise that we can’t quite yet see. I don’t know what that means for you. What it is that has helped you get to the here that is your life. But my hope is that you can trust it to be faithful to get you to the there that is your life still to come.
