Louisiana gets foggy in the early morning, and a little cooler.
Still hot, just a little harder to see.
Although it does call to mind foggy harbors: ships berthing at the docks champing at the seafoam that rocks them slowly from side to side, straining at the ropes keeping them tied.
My little jeep patriot was no ship, but it was loaded about as full as an English navy schooner and humming as I sat with my hands on the wheel, taking a few deep breaths after cramming my guitar next to my trunk next to my mandolin next to my camera gear (and my board games, I’ll admit).
You get the picture.
I shut off the engine and crept back inside to tell my parents goodbye without waking up the rest of the house (I’m the oldest of 10). I was headed to North Carolina for the summer, to work a camp I had signed up for on a whim after a bad breakup (I’ve never heard of a good breakup, but I’ve heard of them hurting a lot less) and a college graduation that was more anti-climactic than propulsionary.
Not much of a graduation instagram caption.
I was hurt, broken, and deeply in need of more than a reset. The last couple of weeks since my return from a brief trip to Africa had been hellish, a re walking of every memory I had made in Baton Rouge and had no interest in re living.
A sort of highlight reel that only played the depressing parts (backed fully by an entire string section and mood lighting). I had to get out.
I had filled out an application for a worship camp in Ohio, and a backpacking camp in North Carolina. Fully expecting the same radio silence that my job applications received, I was surprised when the backpacking camp reached out after a few days to schedule an interview.
Evidently camps are more in need of counselors than marketing agencies are in need of butts in seats. Convenience or Providence? You tell me. They also happened to need a counselor to teach guitar, and it was the only slot available.
We’re gonna go with convenience (but whisper Providence).
I’ve been telling my parents goodbye for years. I attended boarding school through high school and spent two years as a novice (basically a monk), so homesickness was no stranger to me.
Leaving and not knowing when you’re coming back has a different shade to it, though. “See you soon” sounds much different than “I hope I see you soon.”
Hope. That’s the difference. And I didn’t have a lot of hope in my backpack as I stepped up to the front door.
Mostly half-finished prayers and miscellaneous camping gear.
I hugged mom, hugged dad, and swallowed the lump in my throat that was threatening to turn into tears. My gosh: this hadn’t been hard in years.
Maybe it was the general sadness of the last couple of months. Or maybe it was the hard work in therapy finally paying off, and I was finally feeling things.
Either way, it was hard. Harder than I thought it would be.
I watched them disappear into the fog as I drove off, a twelve-hour drive ahead. I put my drive into Mary’s hands with a short Hail Mary, and sat back as my thoughts like my tires spun in circles, taking me closer to whatever was next.
Next.
That’s a word I had sat with for weeks. A word that can haunt graduation parties, engagement festivities, and baby showers. People seem to have all sorts of social guidelines and respect for the general feng shui of a conversation before they utter “so what’s next?” and shatter the carefully crafted euphemisms for “I don’t know.”
Next.
As if you haven’t drank over it. Or cried over it. Or done other things to cope with its existence and the dark, empty void ahead it seems to imply. As I crossed state lines, inching closer to North Carolina, I worked on digesting the fear of the unknown and the sadness of the season of life left behind.
What I didn’t foresee coming next was the painting in the camp dining hall that greeted me when I entered: the painting of the very image for Jesus that I’d been praying with the last few weeks, wrestling for space with the void of “next” in my brain.
The image of Aslan.
The words “Courage, dear heart.”
Aslan utters this phrase to Lucy many, many times in the Chronicles of Narnia series by C.S. Lewis, as she questions his guidance and expresses her fear concerning the path ahead.
She does this many, many times.
And I do it more.
But Jesus, like Aslan, rather than becoming frustrated with the ant of his creation that dares to question his almighty reasoning, simply cracks a smile and responds to all my doubts with “courage, dear heart.”
He also reminds me:
“Whenever you enter a house, stay there until you leave from there” (Matt 6:10).
I have the tendency to move quickly, to leave things half-finished in the hopes of snagging more things. Of upping and leaving as soon as the conversation dies, convinced I can find greener pastures elsewhere instead of sitting in uncomfortable silence,
But Jesus doesn’t. He stays. He lets the wine run out, lets the rain thicken and the waters rise. He’s not concerned with the next thing: he’s dangerously in the now. He knows the peace the present can bring, even when the future looms dark and empty.
But it’s hard.
It takes courage. It takes courage to put the planner down, turn off the phone and stop justifying the present moment by what’s around the corner. It takes courage not to let our identity depend on the magnitude of what’s to come. Even Jesus had his agony, where he struggled to remain present in the garden as he pictured the horrors the morning would bring.
“Courage, dear heart: stay there until you leave.”
Jesus invited me this summer to remain present, to heal from scars dealt too quickly, and to understand that receiving the gift of the now doesn’t have to depend on more gifts to come.
I hope he invites you to the same.