Lost in Time
Liverpool Hut, Southern Alps, South Island, New Zealand // Altitude: 1,100 meters.
Hey there,
How often do you get the chance to escape?
To chase that feeling of lightness in the chest, to leave the world behind and be consumed entirely by something new?
When I first stepped off the plane in New Zealand, I hopped on FaceTime with my dad.
I was giddy — I couldn’t stop smiling.
I told him how the air smelled different — it smelled clean. I told him how the sun provided warmth winter at home had been lacking — little did I know that was because of a hole in the ozone layer above New Zealand.
I told him how I FELT LIGHTER. The world, my life, the past; all had been hidden away in luggage and lost in transit at Dallas Fort-Worth.
But now, closing in on 3 months, I see the world differently.
I slam my laptop shut and walk out of a coffee shop when I can’t get words to flow.
I worked through sunset last night on my next email — and I have nothing to show for it.
I worry about work, about money, about the future…
In a place as wonderful as this, the world has still weaseled its way into my mind.
The pure thoughts and childlike wonder that consumes me every time I land in New Zealand have, themselves, been tarnished then consumed.
I spend my days anxious about things that are ethereal, oblivious to the slate-riddled, glacier carved, alpine summited reality…
that exists in front of my very eyes.
When I was younger, I travelled to run away.
From my father’s cancer, from sexual assault, and soon enough, from the reality in which my brother put a rifle in his mouth and pulled the trigger.
And it worked. For awhile.
I found peace in new sights, I found comfort in new sounds.
Coyotes surrounding me in New Hampshire left no room for thoughts of misery or sulking.
But what I realize now, all these years later, is that peace isn’t found in going somewhere new.
Peace isn’t found in a boarding pass.
Or an interstate on ramp.
Peace isn’t found in relationships, romantic or otherwise.
Peace isn’t found in a sunset by the ocean, and it isn’t to be found on a mountain saddle.
Those things can provide temporary escapes, and for that I thank God.
(Creation has sustained me through the worst moments of my life, and it can do the same for you.)
But if you and I want to find real, everlasting peace… if you and I want to be surrounded by real, surrounding comfort,
We can only do what we’ve been told is most effective:
“Be still, and know that I am God.”
Psalm 46:10