Razor Wire in the Fog
I sat on the M Friday morning for 2 hours. The weather was cold, foggy, and quiet. It afforded me time to think.
On my way out the door, I decided to catch up on some reading. I'd picked up Elie Wiesel's Night over Thanksgiving break, and since I knew my morning was liable to be long, I took it with me.
The M was literally in the clouds. I could barely see the fence around the M from the road, but once I was halfway up the path, it had completely disappeared. There was so much fog, I couldn't even see the road I'd just climbed up from, so it was just me. In a world of grey. Very little sound, nothing to look at. Just me and my thoughts.
Why is it that whenever I have urgent stuff to do, my mind wants to wander amongst wide open mental fields, and yet when I have nothing but time, my mind yearns for something to do? It's mildly annoying.
Elie Wiesel is a survivor of the Holocaust, and Night is about that part his experiences. He was raised in Hungary, moved to a ghetto, then another ghetto, then finally deported. To Auschwitz-Birkenau, where he saw his belief in God die in the flames of mass graves and crematoria. Forced marches in the snow, cattle cars that boarded 100 and disembarked 12, Dr. Mengele the Nazi "Angel of Death", and so on. He talks about crying out for God's help with no answer, about camp inmates saying that the Holocaust was God's testing. He talks about how his father's last words were calling to him, and instead of running to him, he was angry because his father's yelling could have attracted the SS guards.
As I sat thinking with myself in the fog, I couldn't help counting through other Dead Days here at Mines. The first one, where I had my first weekend "off" of the school year to attend a friend's wedding and visit a church I'd been wanting to see. The end of my first year here, when my neck locked up due to stress.
One year ago, I was just realizing that a beautiful girl was interested in me, and that I could do something besides totally fail at a dating relationship. I had a date that night, and definitely had butterflies in my stomach about it. Then there was the Dead Day last spring. I had invited my girlfriend to keep me company during the last senior M-climb. Ignorant boyfriend that I was, I didn't afford her the attention that I should have. We had been dealing with relationship issues, and that poor girl wanted to work them through. Sadly, I didn't realize that she wanted to work them through right then. I remember her doing a lot of talking, but sadly I didn't hear a word she said. I'm sure she poured out all that was on her mind, and I wished I would have listened. But I seemed to have more urgent things to do, like coordinate the other people on the M so that nobody got hurt. In return, that was one of the things that irrevocably sent our relationship downhill.
My life comes full circle this semester. Here I am, sitting on the M. It's cold, and I'm in the middle of fog. Both physically and in my mind. My mind is full of cold and definitely foggy. I'm in the midst of sorting through things like "How do I fit into ministry on a long-term basis?" and "How do I know that God loves me for who I am?" After a little over an hour on the side of a mountain all bundled up, I'm freezing. Mr. Wiesel stood at attention for hours under threat of death. I'm trying to sort out what should be minor issues with my life, while he saw his family forcibly separated and sent to death.
Cold and full of fog... But God loves me, and somewhere deep down, I know that He actually has a plan for my life that I don't fully understand. I just need to follow Him one step at a time and do the best I can.
On my way out the door, I decided to catch up on some reading. I'd picked up Elie Wiesel's Night over Thanksgiving break, and since I knew my morning was liable to be long, I took it with me.
The M was literally in the clouds. I could barely see the fence around the M from the road, but once I was halfway up the path, it had completely disappeared. There was so much fog, I couldn't even see the road I'd just climbed up from, so it was just me. In a world of grey. Very little sound, nothing to look at. Just me and my thoughts.
Why is it that whenever I have urgent stuff to do, my mind wants to wander amongst wide open mental fields, and yet when I have nothing but time, my mind yearns for something to do? It's mildly annoying.
Elie Wiesel is a survivor of the Holocaust, and Night is about that part his experiences. He was raised in Hungary, moved to a ghetto, then another ghetto, then finally deported. To Auschwitz-Birkenau, where he saw his belief in God die in the flames of mass graves and crematoria. Forced marches in the snow, cattle cars that boarded 100 and disembarked 12, Dr. Mengele the Nazi "Angel of Death", and so on. He talks about crying out for God's help with no answer, about camp inmates saying that the Holocaust was God's testing. He talks about how his father's last words were calling to him, and instead of running to him, he was angry because his father's yelling could have attracted the SS guards.
As I sat thinking with myself in the fog, I couldn't help counting through other Dead Days here at Mines. The first one, where I had my first weekend "off" of the school year to attend a friend's wedding and visit a church I'd been wanting to see. The end of my first year here, when my neck locked up due to stress.
One year ago, I was just realizing that a beautiful girl was interested in me, and that I could do something besides totally fail at a dating relationship. I had a date that night, and definitely had butterflies in my stomach about it. Then there was the Dead Day last spring. I had invited my girlfriend to keep me company during the last senior M-climb. Ignorant boyfriend that I was, I didn't afford her the attention that I should have. We had been dealing with relationship issues, and that poor girl wanted to work them through. Sadly, I didn't realize that she wanted to work them through right then. I remember her doing a lot of talking, but sadly I didn't hear a word she said. I'm sure she poured out all that was on her mind, and I wished I would have listened. But I seemed to have more urgent things to do, like coordinate the other people on the M so that nobody got hurt. In return, that was one of the things that irrevocably sent our relationship downhill.
My life comes full circle this semester. Here I am, sitting on the M. It's cold, and I'm in the middle of fog. Both physically and in my mind. My mind is full of cold and definitely foggy. I'm in the midst of sorting through things like "How do I fit into ministry on a long-term basis?" and "How do I know that God loves me for who I am?" After a little over an hour on the side of a mountain all bundled up, I'm freezing. Mr. Wiesel stood at attention for hours under threat of death. I'm trying to sort out what should be minor issues with my life, while he saw his family forcibly separated and sent to death.
Cold and full of fog... But God loves me, and somewhere deep down, I know that He actually has a plan for my life that I don't fully understand. I just need to follow Him one step at a time and do the best I can.
posted by The student of life at 12:28 AM
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