I’m not sure when Eugene joined Bookcamp, but I remember hearing his story and thinking, “Here is someone who gets searching out and clinging to God when life is hard.” He understands first-hand what it means to be hit by a curve ball that drops you to your knees only to discover the tender arms of Jesus lifting you and carrying you through times of uncertainty.
Evelyn Sherwood
Two months after our wedding, The Redheaded-Wildflower [my wife Dee Dee] ventured into the magnificent mountains I first experienced backpacking in ninth grade. Crater Lake sleeps high in the Colorado Rockies and boasts solitude, formidable fishing, romantic nights under a billion stars, and the glacier I’d nearly lost my life on.
We saddled ourselves with backpacks at the trailhead, prayed, and started climbing. For the first few miles, we were a couple of newly-married hippies chattering and dreaming about our first trip into the wilderness together. Soon, however, we were confronted by a cowboy standing behind a barb-wire fence with a rifle laid in the crook of his arm.
“Trail’s closed,” he barked.
“How can you close off a National Forest?” I said.
“This is private property.”
He moved the rifle subtly, and The Redheaded-Wildflower grabbed my elbow. We had planned this trip with as much detail as our wedding. Reluctantly we hiked back to our old yellow Subaru, angry and disappointed. We tossed our packs in the back and sulked back to the highway, trying to figure out what to do with our freeze-dried meals and precious dreams.
That was not our last exposure to unexpected and disappointing boundaries. Seldom have we viewed them as pleasant.
Thus when the Psalmist writes to God, “The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places,” we argue as I did with that gun-toting cowboy. Pleasant?
That’s especially true in this season of my life. In the past few years, I could taste retirement the way The Redheaded-Wildflower and I tasted the wilderness that June in 1979. I’ve been working since I was twelve, the year after my father died—lawn care, carpentry, maintenance, mining, and then pastoral ministry for forty-some years. We’ve planned and prayed and sweated for this season of our lives.
We’ve got people to see, places to go. There are books to write. We began hiking the rugged 486-mile Colorado Trail in May of 2020 and are only 120 miles in. We yearn to spend more time with our kids and grandkids. We have missionary and pastor friends worldwide that we want to visit and encourage. Only God knows what else.
With those dreams in mind, I retired in February of 2023. But I contracted COVID-19 in October of 2022 and have struggled with post-COVID-19 since then. You can read more about that here. Like the cowboy at that National Forest boundary, long-COVID has defeated our plans and deflated our hopes.
People have asked, “How’s retirement?”
“I don’t know. I’ve had post-COVID.”
Still, Psalm 16:6 has been stuck on repeat in my head and heart like an unbidden pop song. “The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places.” Boundaries in pleasant places. Boundaries. Pleasant places.
What does that mean? I’ve demanded of God. Post-COVID has dropped harsh boundaries. Brain fog drifts in and out of my head like heavy sea mist. Fatigue is a constant, unwanted companion. My hiking boots hang by the backdoor like phantoms. Our Springer Spaniel, Sir Winston, pouts because I can’t walk and play with him. I can barely leave the house, much less travel.
Over a now rare dinner with friends, I described these struggles.
“Maybe God is preparing you for eternity,” one said. “Not that you are dying,” she backtracked.
I mean, I am. We all are, I thought but nodded and smiled, not receiving her words as a death prophecy. Instead, they rang true. When I’ve not been banging my clouded head against these unpleasant boundaries, I have occasionally lifted my eyes above the fence and glimpsed eternal things.
My health restrictions expose me to how knit together God’s kingdom and daily life are—eternity breaking in now. These boundaries are not sending me to heaven but bringing heaven to me.
Eugene Peterson paraphrases Psalm 16:6: “You set me up with a house and yard. And then you made me your heir!” God’s boundaries give us a place to live physically and spiritually within God’s will. God’s boundaries are pleasant because they only allow pain to enter the yard through God’s loving knowledge and powerful redemption.
Not that God struck me with COVID-19 to teach me about eternity. On the contrary, God is writing eternity into the boundaries I’ve collided with over the last seven months.
What happens when the infinite touches the finite? Sparks fly!
It’s as if God takes my dull understanding of life to the grindstone.
Reset Your Definition of Success
“Ha, you think your definition of success equals mine? Remember the mustard seed?” God chides. In this season, I’ve had to see seeds of the eternal in the mundane. How holy and delightful are small conversations, clear-headed moments, short walks, and Sir Winston planting himself by the couch that I’m restricted to that day.
Heaven needs not our big movements, delirious advances, or profound breakthroughs. Heaven comprises holy, sacred, scattered wildflowers of delightful conversations, meandering walks, praise songs, and long rests. I’m learning it is through these heaven comes to earth.
Life Is Not A Race
God again: “Life is not a race, a relentless pushing of boundaries, stockpiling accomplishments, flexing your muscles. It is a rhythm of work/rest. Rest is not only for times of exhaustion. Rest is a restorative spiritual discipline. When I obey my doctor’s orders to pace myself and take frequent brain breaks, I also obey God’s command of Sabbath.
Receive The Mystery
I must do all I can to be healthy while realizing every ounce of my effort measures not even a mustard seed. With past health issues, there was usually a prescribed path forward. Physical therapy, tried and true medications, healthy diet, exercise, time. With post-COVID-19, no one knows what it is and how to deal with it, though research is slowly presenting theories.
This is the most telling preparation for eternity: comfort and faith in not knowing all the answers, even the crucial life and death ones. Boundaries are pleasant because the One at the fence is the good, true, wise, loving Creator of our lives.
