Through all the struggle and determination; strange turns into deserts and forests, much afraid was finally making her way to the High Places. The snow under the feet of both her and her traveling companions crunched as they saw towering crags surrounding them and looked back on precipices already conquered. The fog even rolled back from the side of the mountain, making their travel joyous. It was then, while riding the winds of their hopeful elation, they suddenly came upon a turn in the path. It led not up, to the promised High Places already coming into view, but straight down to the valley of loss.
As I first read this passage, my heart dropped. How can it be that God would ask of me to abandon every good thing that he has already given? Do I still follow the Lord directly away from the Promised Land simply because he asks it? My mind raced through faithful servants that have gone before. Thomas Merton talked about reaching “contemplation” by abandoning desire of “contemplation” itself. The more Mother Teresa dove into the lives of the oppressed, the more she operated out of a sorrow that lived deep inside her, suffering for those she was to serve. Abraham offered up his own son on the alter in fearful obedience to God. Bobbiroshia the motilone leader came to the conclusion that he didn't care if he lived or died, he just wanted to be like Christ. I thought about Jesus himself, all alone and crying out in the garden, “Lord take this cup from me!”
And then there is Trevor Williams. My story is yet to be told. I am still on the beginning of the journey, looking down into that first desert that leads away from the high places, thinking “This is crazy.” But the looming prophecy that I will one day have to abandon all God has given me to be united with God himself goes against all my reasonable sensibilities. Will I be able to join Christ in saying, “Yet not my will but yours be done?” To tell the truth I don't think I have the choice. Like Much Afraid said, “All the time it is suffering to love and sorrow to love, but it is lovely to love him in spite of this, and if I should cease to do so, I should cease to exist.” I have seen too much to turn back, and I no longer can deny that this path, however crooked it may seem, is the only way to the real eternal life. My only choice is to accept it with joy, stumbling forward in faith, as I take my next step on the trail laid before me.
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