Destination
“The
path to our destination is not always a straight one. We go down the wrong
road, we get lost, we turn back. Maybe it doesn’t matter which road we embark
on. Maybe what matters is that we embark.”
Barbara
Hall
When I
traveled to Costa Rico with friends a few years ago, we rented a car in San
Juan. We had the crazy notion that we would drive to our small village accommodations
two hours away. We even paid extra for GPS—one of those little boxes you set on
the dash and plug into the cigarette lighter. Off we went into the mountains.
About thirty minutes out of the city, the GPS stopped working but we were not dissuaded—just
kept driving in the direction, we thought, of the Pacific Ocean—surely, we
couldn’t miss that. After two hours, we were still in the mountains, and beginning
to think that maybe we should have gotten a map, so we stopped in a small town
to buy one. Of course, none of us spoke the language, so we weren’t able to
make our request understood. Even when a shopkeeper finally grasped what we asked
for, she didn’t have maps and didn’t know where we might find one. After
several hours, it began to pour rain, darkness was closing in, and the
windshield wipers were not able to clear the fog from the windows. Finally, we
found a police officer at a produce stand on top of a mountain, who, though we
didn’t speak his native tongue, managed to understand what we needed. He explained
that we were headed toward the Gulf and not the Pacific, then got into his car,
put his lights on, led us to the proper road, and sent us on our way. After six
hours of driving what was supposed to be a two-hour trip, we finally found the
small village by the grace of God and the kindness of that police officer.
I wrote
all that to say this—my favorite part of that trip, the part I most remember,
was getting lost in the misty mountains of Costa Rico. What a beautiful land, in
which people were universally kind. Getting lost is sometimes exactly what is
needed. Sometimes wrong turns and misunderstood directions take us where we need
to go rather than where we want to go. Our destination isn’t always what
we expect it to be. Sometimes, it’s even better!
Life is
a twisted thing—high mountains and low valleys, on a road that turns this way
and that, and loops back on itself. We need to say a prayer, buckle up, and get
ready to be surprised. You will know you’ve arrived at your destination when it
feels like home.
In
the Spirit,
Jane
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