Around the Bend

 "I don’t know what lies around the bend, but I’m going to believe that the best does. It has a fascination of its own, that bend... I wonder how the road beyond it goes—what there is of green glory and soft, checkered light and shadows—what new landscapes—what new beauties—what curves and hills and valleys further on.” ~ Anne of Green Gables ~ L. M. Montgomery

I've spent much of the past few months saying "I don't know" about so many things.  Not knowing things is not only frustrating, it can also keep you from moving ahead.  Most of the time when I've had to say "I don't know" it's just been about a specific, limited thing--which is bad enough.  But sometimes--this summer, for example--I've felt like I was in a boat on the Colorado River at Horseshoe Bend without a motor or oar.  Getting nowhere and having no idea what lies around the bend.

Anne's quote put a different spin on the bend for me this morning.  If you know Anne-with-an E, you know she is a glass half-full kind of person, someone who always looks at the positives in life.  Reading these words--Lucy Maude Montgomery's really--I promised myself to make a better effort about going with the flow, not fighting the current, letting it take me where it will.  This is not easy for me.  I am a need-to-know kind of person.  And yet I also love wandering--getting in the car and just going, following the many rabbit trails that cross our paths if they look like they might lead to something interesting.  I guess it depends on what I need to know!  Sometimes there is more delight in the surprise discovery around the bend than staying put, but in the know.

There's a song that parallel's Anne's thoughts, although I don't think she was speaking about spiritual things necessarily.  It fits, though:

I don't know what the future holds, but
I know who holds the future.
Through it all God has made a way.

Days go by and how time flies,
seasons always changing.
Through it all God has made a way
to find eternity inside today.

I don't know what the future holds 

but I know who holds the future.
I don't know what tomorrow brings 

but He brings it all together.
All I know, this is love
and I can't get enough of Your love.

I don't know, can't understand where it is all going.
All my tears he's already cried.
Because he lives, eternity is
another way of thinking.
All I need He's already supplied.