The Way Out
When my boys were toddlers, they had a board book that was among my favorites. I loved the way the words lent themselves to a sing-song read, I loved the story of a family on an adventure together, but most of all I loved the refrain.
This adorable family of a dad and four kids goes out with the intent to find a bear. Just this absolutely audacious goal to purposefully encounter something most tend to avoid.
But as they go on this quest, they run across obstacles at just about every turn. Thick, oozy mud; long, wavy grass; a deep, cold river…and every time they tell themselves:
We can’t go over it
We can’t go under it
Oh no! We’ve got to go through it!
And they do. The carry one another, link arms, and forge through the task ahead.
As we’re on the road to healing, to becoming a better version of ourselves than we were before, we might set out bravely, but the obstacles are relentless.
And we have to go through them. As Robert Frost said “the best way out is always through.” And I agree. Except I believe the only true way out is through. We can’t shortcut our path, so it’s necessary to have people to carry us, link arms with us, and encourage us.
The things we dig up, the challenges we face, the ways we doubt ourselves will cause us to want to call it quits.
At the end, they do encounter the bear but are terrified, so they run back home to crawl safely into bed and hide under the covers.
When the family proclaims “We’re not going on a bear hunt again!” I recognize in myself the times I get scared of the supposed monsters lurking in the dark caves of my mind, so I run back to familiarity in an effort to hide myself from the reality of what I just encountered.
I tell myself “NOPE! You can’t do it! Just hide and wait it all out! Just go back to where you were, because better the devil you know than the devil you don't know!”
On the final page we see the bear forlorn, wading through the waters of a beach at sunset.
But every time I read the book, it feels to me the bear has done this before. He knows the game, as this wasn’t the first time the family has faced their fears to come find him. He knows despite the family’s proclamation that they won’t go on a bear hunt again, they’ll be back.
He’s forlorn because they just have to go through it all over again, and he so wishes they would just finally face him and realize that the best way is to keep going.
He’s not nearly as scary as they make him out to be when they encounter him, and all of this u-turning is blocking them from receiving the joy of making it the whole way.
But I have hope that one day they will make it all the way. And they might realize it would have been easier to do it the first time, but they’ll be so grateful when they finally reach the finish line. Just joyous they did it at all.
When you’re facing the bears of life and are most tempted to do a u-turn, keep in mind that’s exactly when you’re on the precipice of something huge. Huge and beautiful and healing. Not that it makes any of it less scary, but hold on to that hope as you face the big things and keep going through.
Always forward. Always through.
