The Great Outdoors

Cape, our tall and confident 6-year-old middle daughter, stood up the hill from us watching curiously as I wrapped a chain around some shrubs. Banks, our youngest and a toddler at the time tumbled out from around the corner of the house like a clumsy puppy. She peeked around behind Cape to watch as her mom and I cleared some underbrush from near the house. I gave a thumbs up to wife Hannah and she eased the truck forward, tightening the chain and pulling the shrubs up from their clenched roots.  

“What are you doing, you nut?” Hannah laughingly hollered at Banks as she got out of the truck. She laughed and giggled. Cape did too. Banks stood naked as a jaybird. Slightly embarrassed, she sheepishly tucked her chin into her shoulders to suggest her modesty. I crawled under the next layer of privet branches and began wrapping the chain again. Hannah continued to laugh with the girls as she got out of the truck, now parked just downhill from me. Cape and Banks stood on the worn path. Both of them were barefooted, so they were reluctant to step off the path and into the brushy side yard. Such is life, isn’t it? The choice often seems to be whether to stay on the path or not.

Down on all fours, I wrapped the chain twice around the clump of privet trunks and heard a familiar buzzing in my ear. In the blink of an eye, I looked up to see the girls, a mere 20 feet away, and then looked down to where my hands pressed hard against the earth. The ground boiled between my hands, and before I could utter a word, the first golden-striped defender sank his spear deep into my ear lobe. Leaping to my feet, the swarm ensnared me. Yellow jackets swirled all around my head and locked their mandibles into my skin, hair, and clothes as they stabbed their venomous spears into my skin again and again. I hollered “RUN” but stood motionless. I couldn’t go up the hill because that was where Cape and baby Banks stood, still naked as the day she was born. I couldn’t run down the hill because that was where Hannah was, perched in the debate of whether she should come to my aid or seek safety inside the truck.  “Get in the truck,” I yelled. As I turned, I saw Cape scoop Banks up into her arms and run around the corner of the house. Subconsciously, I prayed that she took her inside to safety.  

And then I took my own advice and ran. It all happened in a flash. No more than six or eight seconds from beginning to end and then I ran like the wind. Like the Flash, as fast as I could all the way around the house. And, like the groom on his wedding night, I tore clothes from my body as I turned each corner.  Rounding the last, I stripped the remainder of my yellow jacket infested clothes and dashed inside. Hannah had found her way through another door and met me as I entered. She crushed a few of the marauders in my hair and stomped a few that she had swatted away. I collapsed onto the couch. Thirteen times, those yellow jackets found their mark- mostly around my head and neck. But I was thankful. Neither Banks nor Cape had been stung, and Hannah managed to avoid the swarm’s wrath too. A few minutes later we all stood perched in the window overlooking the hive. The swarm circled some ten feet up from the ground and thousands of yellow jackets darkened the sky.

“He was surely with us, wasn’t He,” Hannah remarked as she held Banks on her hip. Pulling Cape close to my side, I patted her on the back and responded, “Yes, He was.” And He is, friends. Waiting at every opportunity in the world are the yellow jackets of life.  He goes before us- “and He will make straight your paths” (Proverbs 3:6).   The girls stayed on the path that morning, and He protected them. He’ll do the same for us in life when we “acknowledge Him in all our ways.”  The path may be bumpy. It may be rough. It might get muddy, or it might get tough. But stick to the path of His will for your life, and He will go before you and make it straight.