Avalanche Country

I live in avalanche country. It's true! It's the land of oh, so many mountains, creating the perfect environment for these massive snow-slides to occur every Spring. Often, around that time of year, the local news or traffic reports will inform the public of some road or mountain pass that's been closed due to avalanche for a period of time so snow removal and clearing can happen. Take a hike around many trails in this place and you'll find signs warning of avalanche danger or even telling of a specific incident many years before where one occurred. There are occasionally stories of someone who gets trapped in one and isn't recovered in time to save their life. That's the sad part of it. You can even see in various places that you drive or walk where the stumps of trees serve as reminders of a past slide that took out huge swaths of nature in its devastating path.  

Over time, I've often thought about how this acts as a metaphor for certain times in our lives. At least it has in the past for me. You see, avalanches often hit quickly and what looks stable and certain gives way faster than one can even react, taking them out rapidly by forces outside of their control. The softening white powder (usually triggered by warmer temperatures) lets go of its icy grip and there is nothing anyone can do to stop it from plowing its way down the mountainside and into a giant heap. Somehow, that feels like what life has sometimes done to me and you. We're like a skier or hiker that's making our way down or a resident that is living in its path and all of a sudden, we find ourselves trying to face the inevitable. 

Avalanches in our life come as unexpectedly as the real thing. One moment, all is calm and stable - the next, everything feels like it crashed into a pile of mess and broken and we're trying to figure out how to clean up, dig our way out. The fear is real: this had enough force to nearly take us out. We escaped and we survived, but our pounding hearts and racing minds are letting us know we're far from okay in the aftermath. There must be healing. We also look out at what this massive thing wiped away with it. Yes, maybe we still have our own lives but it also maybe took out relationships or memories or a job or another person we loved. Maybe it took out most of what we'd worked so hard to build and now we have to start over. All that's left are tree stumps and pieces of something that once was. 

Standing in the face of your massive thing is so very hard. It came on so fast. You barely had time to get out of the way before it blew on through your life, gathering speed and wreaking havoc as it went. You felt like you were in your worst nightmare. I know. I've been there, also. And in the eery silence that follows, as you sit and ask yourself what it the actual world just happened, it seems like everything is gone forever and there is no way out from here. What you've lost and what has changed feels so overwhelming that you can't imagine moving forward and still having a life worth living. All you see is rubble and devastation. 

And yet...

I recently stood on a trail where there had once been a pretty major avalanche years and years before. The sign said you could see the old stumps and fallen trees where it had crashed down the mountainside. I remember seeing them in the past but you want to know the strange part? I looked and all I could see was a hillside teeming with new life. Bushes and fresh tree growth were everywhere! To the point where I actually had a hard time noticing the old stumps. There were barely visible. All the new growth had taken over, and I was reminded that this is the promise in the aftermath of our avalanche seasons: it will take time for your heart to recover and perhaps even for you to recover your life as well, but there will come a day when new life will emerge. If you continue to move yourself deeper into hope and closer to God, you will one day see the signs that you are healing. Like the mountainside, your soul will be remade and renewed in the end. 

Maybe, like me, you needed this reminder today: avalanche seasons, while incredibly devastating, do not have to spell the end of you or the life God intended for you to have. They can also be the beginning of a new thing that someday, you are proud of.