Stories that are real, that show how a person can succeed on their own, especially ones that involve some physical quest and accomplishment, draw me into them. Their struggles and their discovery about themselves. Real people doing real things.
I was touched by an incident near the end of this book. An incident that I want to quote in its entirety. One that will stick with me for a long time.
The author, Andra, began her trek at the southern end of the Natchez Trace, and, as she reached the end, a man, in his white SUV is parked beside the road. This conversation ensues:
"Ma'am. You okay?" A man sat in a white SUV, his mouth obscured by a handlebar mustache. I took in the logo on the side of his ride. A federal ranger. The first one I'd encountered since Jackson, Mississippi, three fourths of the Natchez Trace Parkway.
"I'm great. Been walking the Trace. This is my last day."
"You come all the way from Natchez?" He leaned through the window and ran his fingers over the United States Government emblem.
"Yeah. I started March 1." I held my breath and waited. Rangers south of Jackson greeted me with doubt. One even regaled me with the story of a couple who tried a through hike, only to be washed out at milepost 90. His tone dripped with, "And they were more fit than you".
The first federal employee to admit I might succeed was a surveyor at milepost 222. It was radio silence from there.
He pounded his door."We been talking about you for weeks! The maintenance crews have been cut back and all that-budget nonsense, you understand-but they've been doing extra runs without pay just for you. "Gotta check on our girl! Every day they've been following your trek on their own time."
"Really?" I thought about the trash collectors I came upon at pull-offs, the foresters I encountered as they removed fallen trees and debris. The trucks that honked as they rattled past. When I talked to them, they said they were doing their jobs as well as they could with no funding, trying to preserve a forgotten place. I blinked back tears with the realization that underpaid, unappreciated people gave their own time and resources to make sure I was safe. To pave the way for me to finish. I swallowed. "Everybody's been following me?"
"Yep. I'm so glad I got to meet you. And you're finishing today."
Still shell-shocked, I nodded. "In about a mile. Yes".
"Well. Good luck to you. We're all rooting for you, wherever you go from here."
She had walked for a month on that road, and she never knew…
Isn't that a picture of God's involvement in our lives?
Just like the footprints-in-the-sand narrative, where the person asks God where he was when she was having all that trouble, as she told him about the one pair of footprints in the sand, and He replies that those footprints were His as He carried her through those times.
He sent those angels on that road for Andra as she walked, and He is still in the helping business for us.
And I am thankful.
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