Splitting the Trail

Oh look, it’s the bridge I said I’d cross when I get to it.

It’s breakfast, it’s two hours to the deadline to make a decision that could have been made months ago.

Tell me if this is the case for you too, or if I’m only speaking of myself. Don’t we all put ourselves through the same madness?

We know the answer as soon as we ask the question, but then we spend days or weeks or even years trying to convince ourselves that we have a choice. That that first gut reaction needed time to ferment, and the night-to-sleep-on-it turns to five, and suddenly somehow weeks have been lost to this torment of indecision.

I need to write lists in careful columns. I need pray. I need to consider all my consequences.

But when an animal freezes in the middle of the street because she can’t choose which direction to run, she eventually gets hit.

This is the lesson I’ll need to learn once more. Maybe twice. The anxious mind is a stubborn thing. It always thinks that it’s right, and wrong, and ill-equipped to tell the difference.

I believe there will come a time when some divine guidance or even supernatural interference is necessary to pull me back from a far-off veering, but most often I am moving well within the means of a safe destination. When I take deep breaths and spend time with my feet planted in sun-warm grass, it’s easier for me to believe that maybe, God trusts me to make my own decisions.

That first knowing, those gut reactions, can be divine as much as are the most innate of all my human functions. As much as my body knows to bleed each month, so I know when to turn left or right. When to cross a bridge, when burn it down.

Now, when I walk the bluff trails near my house, I’m exercising a new habit of surrender. As I approach a split in the path, I do not let myself worry over whether I will take the high trail into the forested parts, where the mushrooms might be sprouting, but only if it rained—did it rain? Or if will take the path to the left, to the epic cliff vista that overlooks the sea. It’s heaven either way, I remind myself, every time I exit the car.

And it it’s heaven either way, then I am free to think of other things until I approach the splitting of the path.

On my best days, I think of nothing at all.

I do not consider the directions, I simply take a step.

And trust that what is meant to find me, will meet me there.