When you have just enough – Carry on My Heart

Recently my family and I went on a hike where part of the trail was an old railroad track. We walked along, board by board where the sunlight and shadows trickled through the trees, falling upon our shoulders and then spilling down onto the tracks.

About halfway through our journey, we turned a corner only to meet up with an enormous tunnel—it was beautiful and terrible all at once—I snapped a few photos and then continued on.

My heartbeat rapidly rose as I rounded the bend into the pitch black where there was just enough light to help take a single step in front of me. I gingerly slid my feet, feeling the boards under my tennis shoes while completely surrounded by darkness. My husband and boys had somehow managed to do this much faster, so I was by myself with only the sound of dripping water and crunching gravel.

I stopped there for a minute.

Alone in the dark.

With strained eyes, I desperately tried to peer into the cavernous, dripping space that surrounded me and suddenly imagined an animal lurking there, watching and waiting to pounce. Just then, out of impulse, I snapped my camera’s flash to get rid of the chill that was running down my back and then quickly high stepped it out into the light of day.

As I burst out of the darkness and into the beautiful daylight it occurred to me, that all we need is a tiny amount of light to move forward.

When you have just enough…

Light.

Walking in the dark of a tunnel is a lot like walking through this life.

When I’m in the dark in this life and I can only see just as far as the light that I’m carrying will shine, it can be extremely anxiety producing. And let me tell you, being an inherently anxious person anyway and adding a situation where I’m not in control of the outcome is a recipe for disaster.

Having just enough…

Faith.

My family has some big decisions to make this year and it’s difficult to know which way to go and which choice is right.

I’m surrounded by unknowns and a lot of stepping out in faith. And it’s precisely times like this where my anxiety pops up big time and I’m tempted to distress because I don’t know the end of the story.

I feel like I’m walking with a tiny lantern rather than a spotlight, you know, just enough light to shuffle forward.

Really, we’re all in the same boat here because none of us have any idea what is going to meet us in tomorrow, whether that’s a year, five or even ten years down the road. I don’t know about you, but just being perfectly honest here, I hate this fact.

My little tunnel experience got me to thinking about the truth of the unknown in all of our lives. I came to the conclusion that there’s a perfectly good reason we don’t have enough light to see way out in front of us.

How many things would we step away from to try to prevent pain in our future?

How would we as humans manipulate our circumstances even more to prevent a future we just don’t want any part of?

It’s a hard truth to acknowledge that we must put our life in the hands of another.

When you have just enough…

Trust.

Here’s the deal; I know I need to trust Jesus with my path, I mean, I write about it! But it doesn’t make it any less terrifying to take that next step.

But…

I remember this truth;

Jesus is already there. He sees it, he knows what’s coming and he’s planned for it. So we don’t have to.

Could you imagine if we knew every misstep or bad thing before it happened? I don’t know about you but I’d curl up in my bed and never leave.

Or for that manner, the good things in our future? Would we truly live in the moment if we knew for a fact that a better one was ahead? Either way, knowing what was coming next would be a disservice to now.

We don’t need the whole picture illuminated to do the next thing, just that little amount of light. Just enough to take the next step.

There’s a reason we don’t know the whole story. In God’s awesome kindness, He illuminates just enough of our path to walk out a little way in faith. He asks us to trust him with the little amount of light he’s given and all along he reminds us of how faithful he’s been in the past.

When you have just enough faith to follow the light

I know, on paper this sounds so easy. However, in real life, it’s much more difficult to trust that there’s not a giant cliff waiting at the end of your lamplight.

I like to think of my relationship with my kids when my mind starts drifting to these thoughts. I would never steer my kids off of the side of a cliff if they could only see part of what I saw—I trust that a good God would do the same. And do you know what else is great news? I don’t need mountains of faith for this, I just need a little, tiny, bit.

And luckily, every grand adventure starts with one. Small. Step.

We don’t need to see the entire picture or the whole story. We just need His story. Every day.

His truth and his words have never, ever, ever let me down. His faithfulness in the past, even when light is scarce has given me hope to believe that He will continue to guide and direct me until my last breath.

“Your word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path…”

As always, friend, thank you for stopping by,


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