Time Now to Heal

I once had a professor who told me, "bleed all over your writing." Her point was, I suppose, that good writing comes from the very heart's blood: it is genuine and passionate. When I laugh, my writing should express delight. When I grieve....you understand the rest. That is the principle, and it is one that I can appreciate, my dear; but I set another above it. It is the principle that weeping is only permitted to last for a night. One night. One only.

Last summer I was in Montana, in the Beartooth mountains with family and friends. We were hiking up to a particular lake for our campsite, and it was cold. Four miles in, rain began to pelt us. We had three children, all tired and grumpy. I was twenty, too old for tears, but when I saw the mad, freezing stream ahead, with a hundred-foot drop on the other side of that shaky bridge... my heart rebelled.

"Oh, God, I can't. Lord, I can't!"

Why, I wanted to know, were the dads intent on camping further up the valley? We had passed many pretty spots; surely any of them would do for a site! It was so dangerous; couldn't they see that? We were eleven and a dog. Could all eleven possibly cross those few sticks in safety? If you have never seen a mountain stream, then you have not understood the words "cold" and "fast". I did not think of it as water. I thought of it as a raving beast, by which my adventure-hungry brothers and father would be swallowed. I kept muttering, "a camp further up is a stupid thing to die for."

Oddly, I was not at all afraid of going over myself. I knew that I wouldn't really feel much; it would be finished too fast. But what if one of the children should be swept across the rocky lip, dashed down to be broken and killed...? Nate and Mike were standing in the stream to help us across. What if their legs simply got too numb and their grip failed? In such furious water...

We did all get across, though I never want to relive those moments again. I am thankful that they have not visited me in nightmares. We hiked further up the valley, but our proposed campsite had been waterlogged by unexpectedly high water levels. The women and children waited while our menfolk circled the area, looking for another option. We were four miles in, and if the dads got lost, or if we became separated, I wasn't at all sure of finding the way back. Besides, it gets cold up there at night: forty degrees. Besides, there are bears. And the rain. Hypothermia? Maybe. Whatever else, there was no way back but across that same stream. That was the really horrible thought.

So we waited. Finally the men appeared and announced that a site had been found. To my bitter surprise, they had decided to camp right beside that stream, on a rocky outcropping not twenty yards from the "bridge." The parents were unpardonably cheerful, and my brothers seemed to be enjoying the entire experience. Even the kids brightened, once Nate got a fire going. Food, dry socks, and tents appeared under the dads' diligent efforts. I went to bed, hugging my littlest sister close to stop her shivering... and my own. I couldn't think about anything except having eventually to recross the stream. I didn't feel anything except anger. I was furious.

Why? Because the situation had tested me. I had been placed in a position of utter helplessness, where my only role was one of trust. Did I trust God? Did I trust the dads? Oh, no... not at all! I had sinned in unbelief, in anger, and done it so thoroughly that I shocked even myself. That was a terrible night of darkness. I woke to a cold dawn, but the rain had ceased. A breakfast fire crackled somewhere near, and human voices murmuring above the rush of water. Fumble-fingered, I opened the tent flap... and found a wonder.

It was this way: the stream was fed by a lake. Lakes up there are numerous and narrow. This was one of the small ones, but "small" in the mountains means something different. It was probably not more than three acres; it curved around our campsite, became the beast-stream, and dashed off downward. Thus, although I could hear the stream close behind me, it was hid by the great rock beside which we had camped. All I saw before me was a quiet lake that scarcely rippled. It stretched away across our small valley, and ceased at a line of trees, themselves only a little green against the bare brown walls of mountain that rose six hundred feet above us.

It was like standing at the bottom of the Well of the World, and sunlight lay warm over everything. I had never seen a place more illuminated, green, and wild. White star-flowers bloomed among the hairy grasses. The air was thin and pure. I breathed it. I shall never breathe the like again. I stared at the lake, the Well-walls, the blue, blue sky... and the tiny flowers. And I was ashamed.

"Dad!" Someone shouted, "What are we gonna call the camp, and the lake?" My family must have a name for everything, you see. "What should we call it, Dad?"

"I have a name for it." I said, stepping forward to join the fire-circle and the namers. "I have a name."

"What is it, Sweetheart?"

"This is Lake Joy-in-the-Morning," I said solemnly.

"Sounds good to me!" Someone said. The conversation turned to breakfast, and who had the toilet paper roll, and whether or not Buddy, the dog, should have been allowed in somebody's tent last night, and why shouldn't the boys be allowed to build a proper bridge further upstream, so that we could cross better on our return trip...

I wandered away. They would build a new bridge, a safe one. I would not have to worry about one of the children falling. There would be fire and marshmellows, and chocolate and walks and sunning, and long experimentation with swimming in the frigid lake. The dads had known best all along. No one would get lost, no one would meet a bear, no one would be hurt or sick at all. All this was true, although I didn't know it yet. The fears were still there, but they had been crowded into the back of my mind. I was ashamed. I was ashamed because I knew that I could trust God, that God is trustworthy, and that I should have done it. The night had been dark indeed, but I knew that daybreak is always only a few hours away, and I ought to have remembered it.

"I won't forget," I promised, in my soul. I spent that entire day sitting by the lake, watching the sunlight on it and pondering God's sovereignty. I wanted to fix it in my mind and memory, so that I could never forget.

And I have not forgotten. The semester has been full of pain, sorrows large and small, more than I ever knew before. But the image of that lake, by which I spent an entire day learning to trust God, has not faded. I can see it now, sitting here at a computer in Maryland. I could see it all this autumn, while the hard theory that I was taught suddenly in Montana has been slowly translated into practice, through trial by fire, in Virginia.

Today, I was sweeping up dead green-yellow leaves from the tree in our sunroom. Full morning light fell across them, lying there jumbled in the dustpan, and all at once in my heart I was awed before their light-on-golden beauty. They were for me joy in the morning... and this time the night was not so terrible, my dear... for I have learnt something about what it means to trust God.

Let grieving go. Do not bleed on. It has had its one night, but joy is come--Oh, Emmanuel!--and morning is come. Time now to heal, O my soul. Time now to heal.