Broken Roads

It was 4 a.m. in Paris.  The streets not yet awakened by laughter or the din of early morning traffic. Baristas dark, with open sign shadowed and unlit.  Chairs stacked upside down as if at attention to the moon. My feet were wet. Sopping shoelaces dirty from puddles.  A heavy bag on my travelling back, straps cutting into my sunburned shoulders.  Questionable hope heavy in my heart. Before I caught the night train out of the city.  It was summer vacation and I was backpacking Europe.  Looking for direction.  Without a map.

Can I tell you a secret? But first, I must ask you, have you ever made a pact with God?  Bartered with him like you were standing at a Mexican marketplace, negotiating down the price of your desired silver.  Played your deck of cards with him, while sheepishly gripping your Ace of hearts. 

If you ever catch me in Las Vegas, do me a favor and check my passport to confirm my identity.  If all rings true, pack my bags and send me on the nearest flight back to Canada. I’m not one to wager and the city of lights makes my toes curl.   But, I’ll tell you one thing, I sat across from God at a black jack table and put all of my chips on one desired dream.  I promised him I’d hold up my end of the bargain if he did this one thing for me.  It was a simple dream, not overly indulgent and I trusted he’d be reasonable about the whole affair.   Years later, as it turns out, God didn’t come through for me in the way I expected.  Dream still hanging like flapping laundry in the wind.  Hung on a clothespin, alone in the breeze, soaking in the sunshine of the hot summer afternoon. Farmer fields perfuming the cotton so as it needs to be washed again.

It’s a good thing God didn’t come clean with me years ago about this dream I brought before him and the timescales I laid out.  I’m not sure where that would have left me. What sort of person I’d become. I can tell you one thing; it wouldn’t be pretty.  This unfulfilled dream and I.

But, somewhere in my quest, in my laundry hanging existence, I found Him.  I really truly found him.  I was looking, yes, but I was looking with an agenda and the broken roads I travelled to meet him were necessary and ultimately used to lead me straight to the dream God knew I needed even more.

And so I’d ask you, in your messiness, in your detours of life-the ones you took purposefully and the ones you somehow just got lost on, what are your broken roads?  Are you on one now, feet soggy, cold and blistered? On a Paris street, tapping of heels echoing through the night sky.  Twisted ankles.  Unleveled ground.  Puddles.  Hoping that the answers lie in a far off place, or the "right" person.  We’ve all walked them, haven’t we?

Would you allow him to use your broken path? To bless it.  Restore it.  Make new.  Because he’s at the end of each and every one.  Open arms.  Calling out to you, his daughter. And having something even grander in store. Something more perfect and more beautiful than you could ever have dreamed up on your own.

~She knew that many were the plans in her heart but that God’s purpose would prevail. Proverbs 19:21