The Ravine

Sometimes life is overwhelming. You look around and all you see is bleak. It's like the darkness is creeping in from every edge, every corner, every side. You feel like you have nowhere to go. Nowhere to escape to. 

What can you do? 

Where can you go? 

Where is your escape?

Along time ago, in a land far away, a teenage girl and her little brother had a really bad fight. He ran off and she couldn't find him. She looked and looked for him because she wanted to tell him something before she moved away. She was leaving - moving off to college. She didn't want to leave without saying what she really felt in her heart. Now, they had bad feelings, arguments, and unspoken words between them.  But, the little brother hid very well. He played outside often, and knew all the hiding holes everywhere and he knew exactly where to go where she couldn't find him. But, she persisted and persisted and finally late into the evening she found him in The Ravine.

"What are you doing in here," she said. "It's dark, and the mosquitoes are bad down here. What if you slip and fall? You could hurt yourself."

"I'm hiding," he said simply. This statement was profound, and and she thought somehow he meant it to be so.

She could see him there in the dark, sitting on a large dead tree that had fallen across The Ravine, his bare legs dangling across the bare space. Fear struck her heart. 

She was so often afraid of things - afraid of hurting herself, afraid of getting sick, afraid of others hurting themselves, afraid of others getting sick, afraid of death. Fear, fear, fear - always there hiding in the background. Her Constant Companion.

And yet, she could see him there - that little boy, her brother - he had no fear. Or, it seemed to be so there sitting in the dark in The Ravine. She also knew that the words that she needed to say to him would require action. She would need to crawl there beside him in the dark, her legs also dangling across that bare space. This against her fear - that was what needed to be done. And so she went.

That seems so long ago now, this teenage girl and her little brother. The discovery of the fallen tree and The Ravine. A great lesson was learned there that day. It stands still. I remember it sometimes when I need to.

When life is so overwhelming and dark and bleak and it feels like the darkness is creeping in from all sides and the fear is so great that you can barely stand....

It feels like it's going to burst even from your own rib cage...

Out of your own being...

Out of your own heart... 

What can you do?

Where can you go?

It is then that I crawl through the dark, crawl through the mosquitoes, and the leaves and dirt and the moss and the sliminess until I find my broken down tree - and then I sit there in the silence of My Ravine.  

 And then in that silence that is not really silence, I realize that the fear is not so overwhelming, the darkness that is crawling in from the corners is really just a shadow of my own heart, and I am able to refocus and ready myself for another day in this amazing, crazy, terrible world.