As a Side Note...

I recently posted about how vision is a great source of hope.

Without vision hope is little more than a wish.

But there is more to the story.

Yesterday my wife and I had the privilege of spending a few hours with one of my mentors and his wife, and we both left feeling just a little more hopeful.  Usually this mentor has words of wisdom, and is able to offer perspective.  I went wondering what vision he would have to offer, what new information he would provide that would give me clarity on some of life's more difficult challenges.  But that was not what happened.

I went in prepared to listen.  But instead they listened as my wife and I poured out some of the challenges we've been trying to tackle as a team.  Instead of advice, our words with met with sympathy and understanding.  Instead of finding new perspective, we discovered that they are navigating very similar waters.  Instead of feeling isolated in our struggles, we now know that we are not alone.

It reminds me of the first time I climbed Mt. Katahdin, Maine's highest peak.  I was in 8th grade, and hadn't done much hiking.  I was one of the very last people in our large group of teenagers to reach the top, and by the time I got there, everyone else was rested and ready to head back down.  I ended up making my way down with another straggler, an annoying 7th grade boy named Jeff.  As we made our way down, we came to a place where several trails met, and we were unsure which one would take us back to where our youth leaders and the church van were waiting.  We spotted what looked like a group of teens some distance ahead and decided to catch up to them.  As we got closer we realized that they weren't from our group.  We had made our decision to take this trail on bad information, and we didn't know if it would lead us to our destination or not. It is worth noting that every school student is Maine is required to read a book called "Lost on a Mountain in Maine", about a boy who gets lost while hiking Mt. Katahdin...  So our imaginations had plenty of fodder for dreaming up worst case scenarios.  I think I would have panicked if Jeff hadn't been there.  Not that this kid who had a habit of spraying shaving cream on me while I slept, was a mountain of emotional stability, but I didn't want to look panicked and scared in front of him, so I acted tough.  Together we faced the unknown and the very real possibility that, with the sun quickly setting, we would get to the end of the trail, discover we were on the wrong side of the mountain, and need to head back up the mountain in a different direction.  Just having someone to face the difficult journey with made it easier.

We were overjoyed to see the church van in the parking lot.  And I never found Jeff quite so annoying after that. He never sprayed me with shaving cream again, (though there was one incident involving crickets in my sleeping bag...) 10 years later he stood beside as a groomsman in my wedding, and a year later I returned the favor.

It wasn't vision that got us down the mountain, or through the difficult situation, it was camaraderie.  Camaraderie made the panic worthy situation seem a little less overwhelming.  Even if the night got dark and we couldn't see the trail or the things moving in the woods, we wouldn't be alone, and that was a source of comfort, a source of hope.  That same kind of hope is what Shandy and I found in a mentor's living room yesterday.