It comes, the time in your life when you ventured down a path and you walked on and on. Before you knew it, it’s too late.
To some, we would describe ourselves as "being in a pit". Can't get out. Some would say, being "lost in the wilderness". I remind myself of my dream I had before I embarked on my social sector journey, that I "drove off an uncompleted bridge". There was no way back. I died that day. In a way, it's all the same.
It is hard to believe when it becomes a reality. You see darkness. You see doom. Nightmares. Death. Torture. An end. Or, not even an end, but a journey ahead that leads to nowhere.
And, you want to get out. You want to turn back. You regret.
But as you drive on for miles and miles, looking for the exit, it doesn't arrive. You go off the beaten track looking for a way back, but it brings you in circles. Back to the main path, you look for that U-turn sign. The traffic flows steadily and zooms past you. Life is moving too fast. You see a "no U-turn" sign, one after another.
You start to wonder if God wants you to U-turn at all. The journey ahead scares you and there is much fear of the unknown. You turn to your side, and you wonder if there was someone, or God, by your side guiding you. You wonder if he's there. You wonder if your path took you away from Him. You feel alone.
Some journeys in life, you can’t turn back on. There’s no way back. It’s like a story book that is inked. Once you write it, it has happened and it has been set. Even if you write the next chapter, you can’t re-write it, you can only build on it. You can only go forward and not backwards.
There’s no way to reverse the damage of some types of poison. Some roads, like the bridge in my dream, you can’t just go back. When in the wilderness, each step I take seems to be venturing further and further away from Him. Everyone would look at me and judge me as having fallen away. Everyone may see me as a failure.
Sometimes, I wish I could cry. Why would I want this? Yet here I find myself. Someone asked me today, "how can I be praying for you". I said, "I don’t know how. Life used to be simpler." "It feels like things compounded itself one after the other." When one thing goes wrong, so do so many other things. No U-turn sign. A path that never seems to end. Feeling alone. Hurt. Lost. Regret.
When there's no way back. I find myself in a sticky mess, stuck. In Newtonian physics, I am in my “oobleck” moment. The journey ahead looks too far, and the journey back looks too far as well. Neither solid nor liquid. Neither here nor there.
Yet, the person reminded me, “the good thing is that you can start anywhere and God is there”. God is there in those oobleck moments. In all these things, we term them the transitional state.
It is probably the most confusing moment. Where matter becomes solid/liquid/gas at the same time. The old has gone, the new is coming. But! It has not come! You can't go back to the old, but you have no idea about the new.
Till you remember. The person is right. There's no way back, it's oobleck, Yet, Jesus walked on liquid water like it was solid ground. Remind me, I'm not sinking. And, I haven't resurrected. But remind me, He is in control.
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