Forked Paths and Forked Tongues

Every path has forks in it. No paths lead straight from point A to point B. That’s not how our roads work, that’s not how our trails work, that’s not how our stories work, that’s not how our lives work. Going straight from one place to another may be the most effective way to get there, but that’s not what any of these things are about. It’s a cliché in some ways, but sayings become cliché for a reason: they’re true. So I’ll go ahead and say it: the journey is often more important than the destination.

Take it on the broadest level possible, for example. All humans begin our journeys on this earth at the same point A – we are born. We end at the same point B – we die. But no one would say that the best way to live this life is to get from A to B as quickly as possible; no, we mourn it as a tragedy when a journey is cut short, when someone takes a shortcut from A to B by their own choice, the choice of another, or an accident beyond human control.

Our lives aren’t about getting from birth to death as fast as possible. It’s all about what happens on the way.

Even within that, there are so many options, so many forks in the road before you reach the end. Stay in school or leave it? Move or stay in the same place? Marry or stay single? Quit one job for another or remain? Retire or continue to work? And with all of these decisions come endless details: where? When? Why? Who? How? Each is a smaller and smaller fork in the road, some rejoining earlier paths and some leading down roads you’ve never dreamt of.

It’s most difficult when the paths are equal. None of the choices I gave, in and of themselves and without context, are bad decisions. In most situations, it’s easy to find benefits and drawbacks to whichever choice you may make. It’s not a choice between a pleasant walk in the meadow and dark forests with dangerous creatures lurking, it’s between two tree-lined avenues which both have light and shade. Either could lead into the valley of the shadow of death; either could lead into beauty beyond our wildest dreams.

Fictional characters – and their authors – face these choices as well. Our characters face mundane choices that may have little bearing on their stories, or may change their entire course; they struggle with major decisions that could revolutionize their lives, or could have little impact at all. And we can all take a lesson from how authors are advised to deal with these decisions.

Our characters don’t live in a bubble of isolation (none I’m aware of, anyway), and neither do we. They seek out opinions and advice from people they trust, and so should we. These opinions may differ, and differ vastly, as we may find in our own lives. The ones we believe, or our characters believe, depend on the truths and lies that we already believe. We, or our characters, are in between two groups of people: wise mentors who encourage the truths we must accept, and the opponents who encourage the lies we believe.

These opponents are rarely true enemies, although they may seem that way. If we trust them enough to ask for advice, then they must on some level want what’s best for us, and they genuinely believe we need to hear what they have to say. Yet these well-meant words, if they are false, are only echoing hisses of our adversary, sliding off a forked tongue and worming their way into our minds. They tempt us towards the wrong fork in the road, promising peace or adventure, safety, security, adrenaline, compliance, rebellion, ease, difficulty – whatever we may be drawn to most. Even our most trusted mentors are imperfect people, and even they may become messengers with forked tongues in their efforts to provide what they think we need.

Without hope in Someone above ourselves, without hope in a knowledge surpassing our own, we are left alone with overwhelming voices trying to drown each other out, hands tugging us towards different forks until our arms are nearly ripped from our shoulders, decisions and details pounding at our minds with no clear sense of which way is right. We end up settling for arbitrary, playing eenie-meenie-miney-mo or spinning and pointing at a path and hoping for the best. Is this any way to live, forever unsure of our decisions, always wondering what would have happened with eenie instead of mo, left instead of right?

We need Someone higher to direct our decisions, or we’ll forever be wondering if we’re going astray. With characters, it’s the author directing the choices, writing the circumstances and the friends the character will trust and the messages the character will receive into the story and weaving it together into a story the character could never have dreamt of by themselves. For humans, we have to recognize that we are characters in the greatest story ever written, threads in the hands of a master Weaver, clay in the hands of an expert Potter.

Our choices are laid before us, good and bad, better and best, affecting our lives and the lives around us, weaving together in His hands. He has a good and perfect plan for each of us, chapters in His redemptive story, threads in His woven masterpiece. And if we stand at the crossroads long enough, if we walk with Him along the paths He’s laid out and ask Him for direction at every fork in the road, He will give it. He is not a cruel Author, toying with His characters, forcing them to make decisions on their own. He takes us gently by the hand and leads us towards the path He has for us.

And if we’re listening, the shouting voices will fade out until a still, small voice is left. The pulling hands will drop away until only His remains. The forked tongues will be silenced, the lies we have reinforced will be exposed, the truths revealed.

And then – then we may take those steps, following our Teacher and the teachers He has given us, trusting that He leads us not into the depths of the grave, but into everlasting life.

Yes, trusting. Because in the end, that’s all He asks us to do.

How Do You Breathe?

Who am I?

It’s a simple question, but profound. The way you answer this question shows what you value about yourself and what you despise, the way you view yourself and the way you believe others view you, the image you see in the mirror and the one you project to the world. It shows your priorities, your passions, your very being, in a few simple words or as many as it takes. It shows your relationships to other people and theirs to you, and it shows how you view these relationships, if you choose to list them all, by the order and adjectives attached. A simple question, but multifaceted, and the answer is never as easy as it seems at first glance.

It’s easy to lose sight of who you are in a crazy busy world like this. It’s easy to trim an edge here and smooth a rough spot there to fit into a mold of who you think you should be, or who someone else thinks you should be. It’s easy to adapt, become what you need to be or what others need you to be in a given situation. It’s easy to fill your schedule and your mind and your heart with these things, things that distract you from that core you, the one that surfaces when you start to ask yourself this question. And it’s necessary sometimes, to put aside something you love for another’s benefit, to sacrifice time you’d rather spend elsewhere in order to accomplish something worthwhile. It’s necessary to make a living even if you despise your job, to interact with coworkers or fellow students or even family that you’d rather avoid but are obligated to spend time with. It’s necessary to put yourself on hold sometimes.

But being on hold is never supposed to last long. And if you leave yourself on hold, if you continue to deny certain parts of yourself, you may lose sight of them entirely. You find yourself one day struggling to catch your breath, wondering where all of your time is going, desperate to renew yourself but unsure of how to go about it – because the self you want to renew is withering away, the fire flickering out.

And that would be a shame. The world needs you, to fulfill all that you were sent here to do. If you replace that with the generic and the necessary entirely, there is a void that no one else can quite fill.

This is something I’m struggling with lately. I’ve been sticking to the necessary, the urgent, the parts of my life that demand so much of me that I leave who I am on hold. It’s necessary, of course – I can hardly make what I need to do for a living harmonize with what I need to do for myself – but I’ve found it’s not enough. I’ve been on hold too long. I’ve lost sight of bits and pieces of myself. And it hurts, to realize this, to share it, to see how it’s affected those around me. I need to find it again, to take the time and rediscover who God made me to be.

So how would I answer this question, who am I? How does this help me stop leaving myself on hold? It’s simple, really. I’ll even give you a list.

I am a writer – so I need to write, to take the time and let my words flow from my mind to my fingers to my screen or paper. I need to allow thoughts to become ideas and ideas to become characters, plots, worlds of their own.

I am a dancer – so I need to take the time to dance, even when my energy is drained, even when I have so little to offer, even when my movements are clumsy and my feet stumble. I need to allow my worship to flood my body and move my hands and feet, allow myself to experience it with all of me physically, mentally, emotionally.

I am a perpetual student – so I need to let myself learn, to set aside time and resources and materials. I need to inundate myself with the knowledge I thirst for, the wonders of God and His works and the minds He bestowed upon mankind which allow them to discover so much. I need to allow my curiosity to be insatiable and follow it where it leads.

I am a child – of God, and of two amazing parents, which makes me a blood sister to three wonderful siblings and spiritual sister to countless more. So I need to allow myself to be a child, to experience the wonder of darkness transforming to light or new life springing forth out of death. I need to let the weight of the world slip from my shoulders and rest on the ground, then allow those wiser and stronger than me to share the load and teach me how to bear my part. Teachable, excitable, joyful, hopeful – a child once again.

And when I do, I’ll find my days will be more fulfilled. My self will be renewed. And my breath will come easier and easier until I can breathe deeply once again.

What about you? What is your answer to the question, who am I? What are the things that keep you refreshed and renewed, able to deal with the mundane in a way that makes it extraordinary? How do you breathe?

War and Peace

Yes, this is from the final battle of Lord of the Rings. Because there's very few times when a Lord of the Rings reference is not applicable.

Many people see war and peace as opposites. They will say war is strife and chaos; peace is the tranquil absence of war. This is not quite correct, as the losing side of any war will say. Peace is not the absence of war; it is what follows a hard-won victory. It is that rest which is given a weary soldier, the sleep granted to the saints who battled for righteousness, the serenity bestowed upon the one who has fought the darkness and won. Peace only follows a battle, and it is never easily achieved. It does not come from standing in the ocean and allowing the waves to batter you as they choose. It does not come from collapsing and allowing the darkness to engulf you. It does not come from standing in the lions’ den and allowing them to consume you. Why? Because peace only comes in the light. Darkness is chaos, and refusing to struggle against it allows the only flicker of hope you ever had for peace to be extinguished.

No matter how hard it gets, you have to keep fighting, or your journey through the darkness will never lead to the light. In any epic saga of travel and adventure, the hero encounters many obstacles along the way. Some of them are physically present, monsters he must slay, villains he must outwit. Some of them are mental and emotional, mindsets he must change, thought processes he must overcome. If at any point he stops and allows these to overcome him, the story is over. He never reaches his mountain, castle, or ocean. He never destroys the ring. He never secures victory over darkness as a whole because he didn’t fight it while it was in pieces. He is then not a hero, just a character who gave up. Peace will never come from giving up and giving in. Peace only comes after fighting until you succeed. That doesn’t mean fighting, losing a battle, and shrugging your shoulders because at least you tried. If you truly want peace, you have to fight for it, taking hold and refusing to let go until you emerge into the light of day.

But it’s an illness, some strugglers argue, as if it absolves them to call it a sickness. They’re right, to some extent. Depression is a mental illness. Anxiety is a mental illness. PTSD is a mental illness, and illnesses don’t go away with a few happy thoughts and a little pixie dust any more than cancer or appendicitis can be cured with a Band-Aid or cough drop.

But no one tells the cancer patient, the Lyme’s sufferer, the person with appendicitis or thyroid disorder or anything else to just give in, be the victim, let it take over. No, you fight with chemo and medicine and surgery and treatments that much of the time seem to make the pain worse, but leave you able to function as a human again. The same goes for mental illnesses: you can never give in and stop fighting, just allowing the waves of negativity and loathing and darkness to wash over you without resistance, hoping that you have enough control to stay alive until they pass. You have to fight with truth and love and the hard things you know will help you. It can be harder in some ways than chemo, because the body can sometimes endure more physical pain than the mind is willing to endure mental or emotional pain, but both can be suffered through and defeated if you don’t lose sight of their long-term gains.

Is it your fault that you’re depressed, anxious, have PTSD or ADD or anything else? No, no more than it’s your fault that you have cancer, Lyme’s, appendicitis, malfunctioning organs of any kind. Is it your fault if you do nothing, just let it take over and have that victory over you? Whether it’s refusing chemo or refusing to fight, the answer is yes. So regardless of which kinds of battles you’re facing now, keep fighting, until the darkness fades into dawn and the war at last is won. Don’t make it your fault.