The crawl…

The circle of life…

Andrew Shearman has a great message on the “Tree of Life”. He teaches that life is not about right or wrong, black or white. It is about Life and Death, and there are times in our lives where all we can do is crawl to the tree of life.

When everything is going wrong, when we can barely take another breath, and we have nowhere to turn, we get on our knees and crawl, If we have to, we crawl back to the tree of life. 

The picture I see when I hear this is the people that are ending their 30-plus day pilgrimage on the Camino De Santiago. Many are found crawling to the end, just to say they finished… hoping that some how there is an answer at the end, somehow there is meaning if they can just make it. 

In the 90’s I was part of a small movement called Rock The Nations. We had small and large events around the country and a college and high-school internship. We had hundreds of young people come through for a few months, some for nine months, and many more at our events. A few of them have become life-long friends, people that speak into my life and still ask me to speak into theirs. I have done many of their weddings and have met many of their children now.

Now, back in the 90’s I had quite the ego. I had not acknowledged my narcissism and I thought I knew much more than I did. My gift was larger than my character, and, in my good and bad, I reproduced myself. 

Last week, one of these young friends came to see my family and me here in Spain. He has an amazing bride and two young boys now, and we have seen each other just a couple of times since the late 90’s. 

When I knew him in the 90’s, he was an amazing;, full of life and leadership, and, as I said, I reproduced myself. He was also narcissistic, egotistical, insecure, wanting the attention of all of us as leaders. He was a mess, just like me. 

He had no idea why he was coming to Spain to see me, and neither did I. He arrived and we just hung out. He came to G42 classes with me, he taught and prayed with me, he came to meetings and dinners with interns and staff, and he hung out with Lisa Noah and Caleb. 

Towards the end of the week we were walking down the street, he said, “I cannot believe how cool this week has been. It’s like we never left one another, but now it’s like it was supposed to be!”

We had come full circle— we were called to one another’s lives, and even in our immaturity and insecurity’s God knew it all belonged. He knew we would come back around after we had some life under our belts— lots of pain, failures, some success, death, life and crawling to the tree of life many times… He brought us back together and it was just right. 

Find the “Tree-of-Life”. I promise, you will always find life, even out of your mistakes. In-fact, God usually is disguised in the dark night of the soul… so, go. 

Find the tree, especially if you have to crawl – many times it’s the crawling that brings the healing…