When have you been…

…in the hinterlands?

One of my favorite books is a thesaurus. I suppose real writers may cringe at that admission, but hey, I’ve got three kids, a dog, a couple of jobs…my brain can only hold so much information. And besides, thesaurus’ are just plain fun. I’ve often had the feeling of choosing a fine sapphire or emerald at a jewelry counter when searching for just the right word…spotting it through the case…wondering if it could be “the one”…feeling at once excited and unworthy when the salesperson tries it on my finger for size…turning it this way and that to see if it catches the light and displays its depth with perfection.

I felt this way when creating this blog title, and in particular, when I found the word: hinterlands.

Just looking or searching or seeking or yearning for God wasn’t going to be good enough. I needed a word that expressed the loneliness, desperation, solitude…even the goose-pimply feeling of being not-quite-where-you-ought-to-be-and-being-there-alone. Thus: hinterlands.

The dictionary defines hinterlands this way: a region that is remote from cities or their cultural influence.

Do you ever find yourself there, in the hinterlands?

I sure do.

Sometimes I prefer the hinterlands. Those who know me well know I take pride in the fact that I am the kind of mom that drives PTO moms crazy…you know, the artsy kind of mom who flies on the seat of her pants into meetings (if I even attend them at all), tends to dress like the DON’T women in the back of Glamour magazine, and whose flighty, coffee-saturated morning stupor frequently causes her kids to miss the bus. I am “a remote cultural influence”.

Other times, I feel like life has drop-kicked me into raging waters…or a deep swampland…far away from the easy current of life others all around me seem to have found. Remote from cities and cultural influences, indeed. I can’t feel what I want to feel. My vision is skewed by thick lenses of shame. I am uncertain of how to react “normally” to the daily things life brings my way.

I have a choice to make when I find myself in these hinterlands and swamplands: to sit there, skin pale, wrinkled and sucked dry by leeches; or to pull myself onto the shore and continue my hound-dog search for Him.

I started the day feeling friendly toward the little leeches: like I could soak there with them all day; like a child who finds one and wants to keep it as a pet.

But as I drove to work and forced my fingers to turn the volume up on the worship CD, I thought I caught a whiff of His scent. It made my nose wriggle ever-so-slightly with the prospect of glimpsing His peace. It made my ears perk, straining just a bit to hear His voice. If I had a tail, it might have thought about pointing.

Just a bit.

And that’s all God needs from us, really. Just a bit of us to turn toward Him.

And then, He runs to meet us in our hinterland.

When he was still a long way off, his father saw him. His heart pounding, he ran out, embraced him, and kissed him. Luke 15:20-21 (The Message)

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