Path of Life

When I was in high school, I discovered a dirt road by our house that led to a forgotten reservoir in the woods.

It immediately become my secret spot: I hollowed out a nook in the overgrowth by the water’s edge where I could sit, furiously scribbling thoughts and stories, or sit so still that the dragonflies would perch on my knees. (Never in my life have I seen insect life as beautifully patterned and as widely varied as at that reservoir!)

The path leading from the dirt road to the water was wide and quiet, carpeted with a rusty bed of pine needles. I’ll never forget the moment I first stepped foot there, feeling like I’d stumbled into a magical world.

Pines towered majestically above, their arms meeting in the sky like vaulted arches. Stained glass sunlight filtered down green and gold as branches swayed in a fluid ceiling, reaching down until the rays that touched the ground seemed to flicker like candlelight. In Autumn, the crowding oaks and maples contributed their red and yellow glory, until the whole place literally glowed with an etherial light.

I might have tumbled down the steep dirt road at a break-neck pace, hurtling off the road in my eagerness to enter my secret world, but I never could run along that cathedral avenue. A holy hush rested there. It was the most real church I’d ever stepped foot in.
In those days, I was questioning if the God I’d learned about in Sunday school actually existed, and if I could meet Him for myself, because I didn’t want much to do with Him if He wasn’t going to be personal. Well, He became far more real to me in those woods than He’d ever been in any brick-and-mortar church.

That hallowed, leafy hall was where He started to show me the path of life, His presence filling the atmosphere, invisible yet so thick I could almost feel it like a royal cloak around me, at once both weighty and exhuberant.
It was many years before I learned to hear His voice speaking directly to me, but it was there I learned that His simple presence was more than enough. His presence invited my presence; I didn’t need to cram my head with Bible facts, or sing prescribed songs or be any type of “good;” I could just be.
Presence is what invites fullness of joy, and illuminates the adventurous, ever unknown path of a purposeful life.

“Path of Life” is the September feature in my 2025 calendar, and it’s available as a print. Click here to purchase!