A Long Walk - Revisited

About a month ago, we took a 'long walk' as a family...a hike really.  Long walks give us a chance to think about things in a way that we often don't, in our normal fast-paced, bouncing, media-laden times.

A long walk is not unlike the prolongedness often involved in a healing process, which I could describe somewhat like this...each step leading to the next, often without much detectible precision in timing (except, perhaps, in retrospect):

• the first is a surgical slice - confession...acknowledgement, an entering in
• the second is something unexpected - forgiveness...rectifying the false reality
• then, a bandage - gratitude
• fourthly a reminder...a scar - obedience
• the fifth is a new lifestyle - freedom
• the sixth is using health for new purposes - sacrifice
• the seventh is true community - joy

...all on a path called 'healing'.

At the beginning, it feels unknowable...where are we going anyway?  We don't even know for sure.  During, it feels full of everything; awful, good, and lots in between.  In the end, it is fragrant with both a sense of a great distance traveled and arrival...a desirable destination, pre-anticipated or not.  And, we're better for it...like a long walk, when we've come to see things differently, new things.