The Trail by Ed Underwood

Author:Ed Underwood
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: RELIGION / Christian Life / General
ISBN: 9781414396262
Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers
Published: 2014-08-01T00:00:00+00:00

Matt walked into camp after supper, sat on the ground, and leaned back against a log next to the fire. His mind was a fog and his stomach held a sediment of pain. He tried to focus his eyes on the two faces in the glow of the flames, but it was impossible. The levees of his mathematical mind had failed to protect him from the tsunami of thoughts and emotions. The walls were down, and waves of uncomfortable feelings washed over his soul, drowning him. After some time he came to the surface just long enough to gasp for air and take in words and sentence fragments before sinking again into the murkiness. In between desperate trips to the surface, Matt pieced together the timeline that had ended in the exact way he had dedicated himself to avoiding.

First Matt had let his guard down and tried to help his coworker. He remembered that first time he had felt sorry for her at the business luncheon. It had seemed so harmless; she was just a friend who needed to talk. So he’d suppressed the warning in his stomach—a misgiving he now admitted was the Spirit at work.

His mind pictured the drive to Newport and the walk around Balboa Island. He thought of her weeping and how good it had felt to speak wisdom into her life that gave her hope. But he had also felt something coming from her that he knew he couldn’t trust. That was when God was telling him to stop it all and confess to Brenda.

He thought of how his coworker kept needing more of him. He’d felt responsible for her, but also guilty over all the lies he was having to tell. It was agonizing to keep all of those lies straight. He wondered why he hadn’t gone to someone for advice and counsel. How could he have been so stupid?

Finally, he recalled the smile on the woman’s face, her appreciation when he’d first given her some money, and how powerful it had made him feel—until he came home that day and the transmission went out on the van and they had to put the repair on the charge card. It hadn’t felt good to be some other family’s hero then. The next time she’d asked for money and he’d said yes, he knew he was in too deep.

The acidic question Matt had once asked God—How do I tell Brenda?—was now answered, but a more haunting question slipped into his heart: Will she forgive me?

The conversation around the fire slowly pulled Matt back to the here and now, and he couldn’t suppress his skepticism as he thought about the old man’s teaching of the circle and the dot. “If this is a dot, it’s not ours. Our dot was supposed to be in some meadow with a tunnel in it,” he said to no one. “I may not be a mountain man, but I know enough to see that this isn’t a meadow. We’re not there yet.

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