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I've just finished reading a book and am pondering it's connection in my own life with the journey I've had these last two years through illness and deafness and the challenges, physically, emotionally, and spiritually in dealing with this new disability.
The book is "Hinds' Feet on High Places" by Hannah Hurnard. It's an allegorical story of a woman's spiritual journey from being in life's valley of fear and crippling obstacles to the High Places of joy and contentment, like the beautiful, white-capped mountains most of us only dream of visiting. She wishes to have the ability to jump and climb with freedom through the woods and across streams and flower fields to the summits, but must first agree to the path the Shepherd plans for her, to achieve the healing and be equipped and trained for the Kingdom of Love above.
I'm not much of a fantasy-genre fan, and this allegory turned me off many years ago when I tried to pick it up and read it. But this time, I got it! I suppose I've lived enough now and persevered through a few of my own difficult spots in life to be able to relate to many of the emotions alluded to in this story. And there are definitely some lessons to be learned from reading "Hinds' Feet on High Places". I marked a few of the lines that stood out to me as I read the book, and want to share them with you. I'd love to hear your thoughts on these as well, or other passages from this book, if you've read it, too.
The first thing that grabbed my attention was when Much-Afraid (our heroine) begins her journey and the Shepherd stops her by a field of beautiful wild-flowers, saying "Humble yourself, and you will find that Love is spreading a carpet of flowers beneath your feet." She responds by noting the strangeness of multitudes of flowers giving so much beauty and sweetness that no-one will ever see or appreciate. On showing her that the flowers are happy to offer their best anyway, he says, "All the fairest beauties in the human soul, its greatest victories, and its most splendid achievements are always those which no one else knows anything about, or can only dimly guess at. Every inner response of the human heart to Love and every conquest over self-love is a new flower on the tree of Love."
In a Facebook age where you tell your world what you're doing every day or what you ate or how you're feeling, it's a good reminder that some things, maybe the BEST things, are those that you hold closest and most secret between you and your Maker. Personally, the pressures of being a volunteer with a non-profit organization where we must live on donations and seek our support through the faithful giving of others means that we have to "toot our own horn" in a sense to raise that money, or else our work shuts down. It's always a personal challenge to do my work with integrity and leave the results and the support of it in my Lord's hands, without trying to jump in and "help him out" in my way and time. I want to be one of those sweet little flowers, offering my best whether it's noticed and appreciated or not.
Another lesson our heroine learned on her journey through the burning wilderness, where nothing grew on the land and the shoreline was scattered with broken driftwood and tangled masses of shriveled seaweed, was to accept the help of her companions, named Sorrow and Suffering, and to joyfully accept the deep, inner changes in her life that would take place as a result of her struggle to obey the Shepherd's assigned path for her. She looked back to where she had started her journey and could tell that she was already a different person; "I was that woman, but am not that woman now."
She didn't understand how it had happened, but she saw that "for those who go down into the furnace of Egypt (reference to the Hebrew slaves of the Old Testament) and find there the flower of Acceptance come up changed and with the stamp of royalty upon them." "Therefore, though she went with Sorrow and Suffering day after day along the shores of the great sea of Loneliness, she did not go cringingly or complainingly. Indeed, gradually an impossible thing seemed to be happening. A new kind of joy was springing up in her heart, and she began to find herself noticing beauties in the landscape of which until then she had been quite unconscious." In my own experience, I found my six months of deafness a kind of wilderness and time of testing. The Bible refers to the metal workers' refining fire for gold, to boil out the impurities in the mined ore, leaving a purest gold to be worked and molded.
That's how I see my wilderness time, as a refining fire, where I began noticing more and more the beauties of hugs, smiles, extra effort for my benefit, encouraging notes and emails, verses and songs from memory coming to mind at just the right time, and personal messages spoken to my heart from the Father to encourage me along the journey. Now I can look back and see that I have changed in many ways, and though I would wish for the quick healing and restored hearing, I know that what I learned could never have been bought ("priceless") or shared from someone else. I had to walk it on my own and learn it by myself.
Toward the end of the book and the end of our heroine's journey to the summit, she recalls to the Shepherd the lessons she learned. The last one hit me that "every circumstance in life, no matter how crooked and distorted and ugly it appears to be, if it is reacted to in love and forgiveness and obedience to your will can be transformed. Therefore, I begin to think, my Lord, you purposely allow us to be brought into contact with the bad and evil things that you want changed. Perhaps that is the very reason why we are here in this world, where sin and sorrow and suffering and evil abound, so that we may let you teach us so to react to them, that out of them we can create lovely qualities to live forever. That is the only really satisfactory way of dealing with evil, not simply binding it so that it cannot work harm, but whenever possible overcoming it with good."
Wow! Is that a challenge? Not to get angry when I've been lied to or scammed again, when someone steals my identity or account numbers; not to try to get revenge when I am abused or maligned. Not to call a name back or mumble a curse under my breath when someone insults me or just isn't efficient in my estimation. There's a lot to consider here...
In my edition of "Hinds' Feet on High Places" there is a brief autobiography and an abridged "Lessons Learned on the Slopes of the High Places" section by the author written about a retreat in the Swiss Alps where she was touched with this story and the truths she learned. She summarizes why she thinks we are born into this fallen world and entrusted with earthly mortal life...that we may learn, in a way which perhaps we could not do in heaven, how to abandon ourselves to loving God. She writes, "In heaven everyone and everything is lovable..everyone loves everyone else, and in hell no one loves anyone. But on earth we are in a perfect environment for learning how to love as God loves: to abandon ourselves to loving the apparently unlovely people who remind us that in many ways we are still very unlovely ourselves! Love is not a feeling. It is an overmastering passion to help and bless and deliver and comfort and strengthen and give joy to others just as the Lord Jesus always did."
This is definitely something I need to work on, and am so glad I read this book at this time to challenge me in these areas.
