All Pain Has a Purpose; We're Always on "The Path"

I knelt by my bed and the cobwebs. Time to pray. To pray for God's will. I was a teenager and I was Adventist. We went away to school--to boarding schools. Where did God want me to go? I had to know.

"Montana!" the answer screamed in my mind.

Montana? But I lived in Michigan. What the heck even was there in Montana? No school that I knew of.

Day after day, night after night, I heard it. "Montana!" till the whisper became a shout. Until there was almost no point to pray. I couldn't get a word in edgewise anymore. Just the thundering, "Montana, Montana, Montana!"

Finally, embarrassed and shy, I pressed my mom—"Uhhh.. any chance you know of a school in... Montana?"

As it turns out, through a distant connection, she did know of one. A teeny tiny boarding school on the edge of Glacier National Park.

Six months later they stood in the doorway of the big log cabin hugging me goodbye. Wow was it gorgeous there. I can still smell the fresh, clear mountain air. So excited for the next chapter.

After leaving the Adventist church in 2023, I wondered about this experience. I never felt God's leading so clearly ever before. To the point of thunder. Deafening.

But why?

A conservative boarding school. Girls wore long skirts and we couldn't listen to Michael W. Smith or Chris Rice--Satanic. Classical music and hymns were where it was at. I once got busted for playing jazz on the piano.

I just didn't know why God wanted me to go "there."

But now... it seems that I do. Because life is a journey. We walk, all our lives, on a path. We're not "sometimes on" and "sometimes off."

We're always on "the path," whatever the path may be.  Always.

I reflect on those years. Four years. Such beauty, impossible to describe. Friendships that still enrich my life today. Such tight bonds. And an incredibly gifted teacher who awakened my gift of thought--who invited me to where my soul took flight. Into physics, philosophy, and something "beyond."

Yes, in so many ways, those years were woven from the very substance of magic.

And then there were the dark parts. The arbitrary rules. The rigidity. The two meals a day, no snacks. The long skirts in -40 weather.

But there's something I've come to perceive in life. If we really are here to learn about love--there's two ways to learn about it. One is through what it is, the other is through what it isn't. Learning in the positive and negative sense so to speak. You learn the lesson through both.

As I reflect back on the many chapters of my life, I can see the golden threads of both weaving together in a rich tapestry. Both what love is, and what it isn't. And to be honest, I learned far more about love in the dark chapters--by deeply experiencing what it "isn't."

In a very real sense, it was the depth of the darkness that guided me towards the light. Towards the experiencing of love that evades words.

What would it feel like to reflect back on the path—the one path—of our lives and bless every chapter? To begin to awaken to the purpose of the pain and the beauty in the breaking?

What would it feel like to surrender—to get lost—in the flow?