Following His Path

Living in eastern Montana has challenged me to learn how to deal with the constantly changing weather. I’m really not exaggerating. It can be 83 degrees and sunny one day and 29 degrees with a full-blown blizzard the next. And this is exactly what happened recently. It was mid-April and I had spent the afternoon before walking the dogs outside in a t-shirt only to wake up the next day to a whiteout blizzard. It was a very wet, heavy snow that landed as a thick layer of slush over the ground. Now, typically, I would prefer to stay in my nice warm house and gaze out the window at something like this but, since one of my dogs had a tooth abscess and he was scheduled for surgery that day, we bundled up and headed out. 

As I have mentioned before in other blogs, we live in a very remote part of eastern Montana with a lot of dirt roads. Many of our roads are a specific kind of dirt found in this area called gumbo. Fun fact: when gumbo is wet, it gets VERY slick (what we call “greasy”) so it’s like driving on ice. The vehicle will slide around on the road in the mud and, if you’re not careful, you can slide right off the road into the ditch. Yes, I have done my fair share of ditch-diving over the years! When I first moved here 26 years ago, I very quickly learned to “stay in the ruts” on a wet gumbo road, following the trail left by other vehicles before me.  As long as my vehicle is traveling in those ruts, it won’t slide off into the ditch. The ruts keep me on the road. I know this is probably way more information than you care to know about driving on dirt roads but it will make sense in a minute so bear with me!

When I left that day, the snow was so wet that the road was getting slick to drive on. As I pulled out on the county road at our mailbox, I noticed someone had “broken trail” ahead of me that morning so there were already some ruts on the road. The blowing snow was making it hard to see so I was feeling grateful that someone else had gone ahead of me that morning and now there were some fairly straight ruts to follow. I remember thinking to myself, “It sure is nice to have a path to follow in this storm!” Right then, I felt the Lord nudge me with that phrase…it was like He said, “Think about that for a minute, Keri.” Wow, I just love it when he does that. Here I am, feeling stressed about getting to my appointment safely and God gives me a revelation from him in the middle of a blizzard! 

As I’m thinking about what he’s trying to tell me about having a path to follow, the Lord reminded me of some verses that I had been reading just the week before:  

“Let your eyes look straight ahead, fix your gaze directly before you. Make level paths for your feet and take only ways that are firm. Do not swerve to the right or to the left; keep your foot from evil.” Proverbs 4:25-27, NIV.

Yes, I could see where the Lord was going with this analogy! Sometimes my life can seem like the storm. The conditions outside can be treacherous so I need to be alert and look straight ahead to stay on the road. And the firm path lays before me, like the ruts on the road - the path made by the One who has gone before me...Jesus! Looking down the road that day, I could picture Jesus in my mind, walking ahead of me in the storm, showing me the way. I needed to keep my eyes fixed on Jesus so I didn’t swerve left or right and end up in the ditch. 

Another fun fact about muddy gumbo roads: if the person ahead of me loses control and slides off into the ditch, my vehicle will follow those same tracks and take me off the road as well. Once I’ve slipped in the wrong ruts, I’m stuck…I no longer have any control. You have to experience it to believe it but trust me, no amount of wheel-turning will prevent it…you WILL get pulled right into the ditch.

So, as I’m pondering how all of this relates to my life, it occurred to me: who’s path am I following? Am I allowing myself to become distracted and slip into the wrong ruts that can ultimately take me into a ditch where I really don’t want to be? Are there situations in my life where I have lost sight of Jesus’ path for me? Was God showing me something he wanted me to change?

It made me think about what my ditches are. What are the things in my life that distract me, causing me to lose sight of the straight path before me? Lord, are there things I’m hanging on to that you want me to let go of? I thought of some of my old habits, my old ways of thinking, and some of the old trails that I used to follow. The ruts on some of those trails are deep and well-worn, making them easy to slip back into. But there is so much hope for us all in Christ!! Jesus declared it in John 14:4:

“I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” NIV.

 Jesus IS the way! We’re not meant to slide around on muddy roads, stuck in our old ruts and getting pulled into the ditch – that is our old life. Jesus has given us new life in him! He wants to lead us out of the ditches in our lives and straight into relationship with our Father. He is walking before us, breaking the trail that we are meant to follow. He is showing us the way, HIS way, that leads to abundant life!

Wow, what a great time I had with the Lord in that storm. Sometimes he uses our experiences here in the world to show us his truth and give us deeper revelation of him. Typically, that experience in the storm would have been very stressful and exhausting for me but the Lord was with me – he was talking to me and reminding me of who Jesus is while I was in the thick of it so I was able to feel happy and joyful instead, despite the raging blizzard! 

When I arrived at the vet office, the wind blew us in the office door, both me and my dog looking rather wet and bedraggled.  They looked up from behind the desk with wide eyes and said “Oh boy, you made it! How was your trip?” And as I was trying to get my hair out of my face and my glasses back on, I just smiled really big and said, “it was GREAT!” And it really was.