The following is a story I wrote based on a dream I had a few nights ago. I expanded and elaborated the dream, but this is pretty much what the dream was.
The Journey
"Climb aboard my angel," he said with his cowboy grin.
He opened the door of his old blue and white GMC pickup for me, and I slid over on the seat so I could be seated right next to him as he took his place behind the wheel. He reached for the key and started the engine. He looked over at me and said, "Feel the power!"
I burst out laughing at our inside joke. This old pickup was anything but powerful, but it was noisy with that missing muffler.
"You really need to get that thing fixed you know," I said, "but when you do, I won't know when you're coming anymore."
"You'll always know where I'm at, Angel, cause you're riding with me from now on, right beside me, my pard, my co-pilot. Together we're going places."
"So just where are we going, Cowboy?" I responded.
"Oh, just down the road a piece," he replied with that ear to ear smile.
"Down the road a piece, now that's really telling me a lot, come on, don't you know where we're going?"
He reached in his back pocket and pulled out a fresh new road map and handed it to me. "Here, take this, this should help. This is something the Lord gave me when he talked to me about marrying you. He gave me this map, and told me you'd help me follow it. I'm not sure which roads to take, but our destination is on there. It's now part of your job, to help us find the right roads to take to get us there. I guess you could say you are now the 'Reader of the Map', the one to see, by means of the map, where we're headed, and where we've been."
I took at the map, and smiled. I love maps! My whole life I have loved looking at maps and seeing how roads connect this way and that, and finding routes to new places I've never been to. I opened the map with anticipation to see where our journey would take us. To my surprise, this map wasn't like any other I had studied before. There was little map, but many words. I looked up at him with a quizzical look.
"I don't get it? I've never seen a map like this before. There's nothing to read, except all these words. What is this?"
"True, this is not like other maps you've seen and read. This one, only has the picture of where we've been, but words to guide us to where we're going. This is not an easy journey, and will take much time with the map maker and his words to get on the right road."
It was then I understood, these were the words of the Lord, there to guide us down this new journey we were taking. For now all that was on the map was the places we'd been since we'd met, and now married. There was this little blue line that showed every where we'd been. It crisscrossed across Montana, North and South Dakota and even journeyed briefly into Canada where we took our honeymoon.
As we drove, the map would appear, and mark our journey with that blue line. The other roads we could have taken also appeared. This was so strange, but so cool!
"I'll cherish this for sure!! I said holding onto the map as if it was a pile of sparkling diamonds and bars of gold.
"This is one of the most incredible things I've ever had."
Year after year we both studied the map, checking to see if we were on the right journey. Sometimes I didn't understand it, and we'd sit and talk and pray for hours discussing what we felt the map was saying to us. Occasionally we changed the vehicle we were driving. We went to a more economical car, and years later a van and SUV, but the map went with us every time we got in. We even took it with us when we boarded a plane and flew half way around the world, and sang and preached about our map maker to people we'd never met before. That made our map expand greatly, and it was so fun to watch it grow. Our world was growing larger. We often talked about the grand adventure we were on together.
There was a sad time in our journey, and it makes me cry every time I look at the map and see that blue line and where it went. It's when my Cowboy took the map and threw it and said he was tired of following that old thing, and wanted to do what he wanted to do. I wept and cried and pleaded with him, but he took the map and hid it from me. It took me sometime, but I eventually found where he had hidden the map, by then our journey had taken many of bad turns, but it was still recorded on the map.
"Get in," he said, the smile gone from his face.
"Where are we going now?"
"You'll see."
His words to me were so few these days, his smiling face had faded to an empty stare.
"Do you want me to drive?" I dared ask. He'd never let me drive, for I was the reader of the map, not the driver.
"Not now," he wearily replied, "maybe later."
Later? I pondered. What does he mean? Would he really let me drive us somewhere?
The road he took was not a familiar one to me, and it was long and rough. I so wanted to stop and rest, and get refreshed by a good nights sleep, but he drove on and on.
I turned to our tattered map, and studied for some words to help decipher where we were going and which roads to take that might be better than the one we were on. The words were blurred and hard to read, a result of the time it was hidden away.
The vehicle jolted, and I looked up. Where was he taking us?! There was no longer a road, and hardly a trail. We bumped along this trail for a long time. Occasionally I would say, "Watch out for that hole or rock." Sometimes it was soon enough for him to avoid, but eventually it was like it didn't matter, he hit them anyway. I was feeling beat up and oh so weary and confused. This part of the journey didn't make any sense.
"Do you really know where we're going?" I asked out of sheer frustration.
There was no answer, just a blank stare as he drove on and on down this rough rough pasture or field, it seemed to go no where, there was no road or path now showing us where to go.
In the distance, I saw this shabby looking building. It looked scary beyond words, I didn't not want to go there. I looked to my map, and the words were more blurry then they had ever been before. Maybe it was just the fatigue, and weariness, but I couldn't hardly focus. This had been the worst part of our journey, and the longest. There had been no happy joyous times on this trip. This was not like any we had taken before. I so hoped for a fairy tale ending, and things would be just beautiful when this journey ended, and we'd get out of the vehicle at some wonderful place, but what I saw coming up ahead was anything but that.
I felt the vehicle come to a stop.
I looked out the windshield at the scariest place I had ever seen in my life!
"Get out," he said, with no emotion what so ever.
With much trepidation I got out of the vehicle, and looked around, I did not like this place at all. It had the feeling of being empty and alone, scared and vulnerable to what ever this place held.
Without a word, I watched my Cowboy get back in the vehicle quickly, this time without me, and he drove away. I was screaming, running after him, saying, "No! Don't leave me here!" I reached for my cell phone, and saw I had no service, and it was not working again. I hit the the iPhone screen screaming, I need to talk to him one more time, he needs me to help him read the map! I was sobbing beyond words. I felt my heart had been torn out of me. How? Why would he just leave me here in this lonely barren place? He'd never gone anywhere before without me by his side. Even in the dark days when he hid the map, I was still with him. Even down this last bumpy horrible journey, I was still there beside him.
Alone, I felt utterly alone. There was no one there with me, just this dark awful place, that was so scary. My tears were making little mud puddles around me on the ground. I don't know how long I knelt there and wept, exhaustion took over and I cried myself to sleep. I awoke, and it was dark and cold, my face mud stained from the tears and the dirt all around me. The barrenness of the place sent shivers up my spine. I walked over to the shabby building and crouched down next to its wall, too afraid to open the door and go inside, and just wept and wept.
The sun was just coming up when I awoke again. It's a new day. I should be rejoicing. But he was gone, and I was all alone and didn't know what to do or where to go. It was then that I saw it laying in the dirt where I had cried myself to sleep the day before. The map. I went over and stooped down to pick it up, and wiped the mud and dirt off of it's tattered paper.
It suddenly looked new, it's old blue lines were almost gone, just faint reminders of where we had been together. The words were coming clearer and seemed to be sparkling. I rubbed my eyes, I must be seeing things, it had never looked like this before. There seemed to be light shining from its very pages. It was then I realized the light wasn't coming from just the map, it was all around me. I looked up and saw the most beautiful man in a shimmering robe. It was like his clothing was light, I don't know how to explain it, how can light be also a garment? He reached out his hand to me. I took his nail pierced hand and he helped me to stand up. I felt engulfed in his light, and it was such a wonderful feeling. His light seemed to penetrate through me giving strength to my weary exhausted body.
His words were kind and gentle when he spoke, and said, "Get in, we have a new journey to take, and I need you to be the reader of the map, for where we will go together."
I awoke with a start, the room still dark, I glanced up to the clock it was four a.m. It was only a dream? I rolled over in bed, and through the dim moonlight from the window, I saw his empty pillow. It really wasn't a dream, this was reality. I saw my Bible laying open on the bed beside me, and I reached for the light and turned it on. I sat up and pickup it up and began to read, those words so familiar and true, "Your life is a journey you must travel with a deep consciousness of God. It cost God plenty to get you out of that dead-end, empty-headed life you grew up in. He paid with Christ’s sacred blood, you know. He died like an unblemished, sacrificial lamb. And this was no afterthought. Even though it has only lately—at the end of the ages—become public knowledge, God always knew he was going to do this for you. It’s because of this sacrificed Messiah, whom God then raised from the dead and glorified, that you trust God, that you know you have a future in God." (1 Peter 1:18-21 MSG)
My journey hadn't ended, it was only beginning.
