BP16
Amanda grew up on a hobby farm and loved every minute of it—especially her horses. The only cloud that drifted across the azure-blue skies of her childhood was the dark forest that towered up ominously at the back of her parents’ seven-acre property.
As far back as Amanda could remember, her parents warned her with stern words and dark looks that the forest was a dangerous place, and she must never enter it. No one in her family had ever ventured into the heavily canopied woods with its impenetrable horde of trees, dead brush, vines, cockleburs and barberry bushes that would tear skin like paper.
Her friends who lived on nearby farms often spoke in hushed tones about old man Kreft who had ventured into the woods years ago but had not returned. He was never found. Amanda shivered just thinking about it.
Occasionally, she had nightmares about evil things lurking in the woods and sometimes creeping out into her backyard and hiding behind the shed. One night, she woke up screaming when she dreamt that a dark shadow had slipped out of the woods and slinked across the yard all the way to her bedroom window.
The signs posted along the edge of the forest only fueled Amanda’s fears. One sign simply had the word, Beware, printed on it in bold black letters. A second one read, Keep Out. The third sign had the words, Enter at your own risk, written on it.
Yet other signs had different messages of warning: Danger lies within, and Do not enter! The sign planted next to the backyard shed had a single large word inscribed in vivid red letters. The script reminded Amanda of a scary, Halloween font written by a bony finger dipped in blood: Forbidden.
Amanda’s parents, when she queried them, told her that they had not placed the signs there and neither did they know who had. They explained that the signs had been there even when Amanda’s grandfather bought the house sixty years ago.
So it was that Amanda grew up with a forest in her backyard that she never dared to enter. Thirty years passed.
When her parents divorced, they abandoned the family property. Desiring to keep the beautiful hobby farm with its horses in the family, Amanda and her husband didn’t think twice about purchasing it (even though she still had nightmares about the dark forest on occasion). Her grandfather would have been pleased.
Several years after moving to the hobby farm, Amanda recognized that she and her husband, Jeff, were growing further and further apart. He was consumed with his job, sometimes working eighty hours a week and traveling for up to ten days at a time. Amanda, meanwhile, was steadily falling into an emotional affair with a colleague at the university.
In a few days, when Jeff was going to be out of town on yet another sales trip, Amanda and her soon-to-be-lover were planning a secret rendezvous at a motel in a neighboring town. She felt excited but also uneasy because she would be crossing a line she had never transgressed before, almost like going into the Forbidden Forest in her backyard.
In her mind, Amanda rationalized that rules were meant to be broken and lines crossed. Just do it, was her mantra.
The night before the planned tryst, Amanda had a dream. She was a girl again and was standing next to the shed in her backyard. It was the middle
of the night. As she peered through the darkness toward the forest, she saw dark shapes gliding about behind the signs.
Terrified—she had never been so near the forest after dark in her entire life—she turned to flee for the safety of her house.
Just then, Amanda saw something out of the corner of her eye. It was bright, not dark like everything else that lurked in the woods. Turning back toward the forest, she saw a glowing figure beckoning her with an illuminated hand to enter the forbidden area beyond the signs.
Amanda stood shaking in the darkness. Paralyzed by fear, her sluggish brain attempted to consider the invitation from the bright figure. Did she dare cross the line into the Forbidden Forest?
Suddenly, a black shadow-being exploded from the foggy darkness and rushed at her with its bony fingers stretched toward her. Amanda shrieked a blood-curdling cry and tried to run. But it was too late.
She awoke with a start. She immediately sat bolt upright and stared out the bedroom window into the moonlit backyard. Her body had broken out into a cold sweat and she was breathing fast.
Jeff, whose analytical mind never seemed to be bothered by anything, mumbled in a groggy voice, “What’s wrong, Mandy? I thought I heard someone scream.”
“You actually heard me scream?” Amanda asked breathlessly.
“So, it really was you, then,” he said without opening his eyes.
“I guess so,” Amanda admitted haltingly. “I had a terrible nightmare.”
“Well, it’s over now,” Jeff muttered as he rolled over and turned his back to his wife. “I need to get some sleep. It’s going to be a long week on the road starting tomorrow.”
Amanda sat staring out the window with wide eyes while her galloping heart slowed to a trot.
She sat as still as a statue for a long time before she abruptly turned and shook her snoring husband by the shoulder.
“Wake up,” she whispered into his ear as if she was afraid that ears other than her husband’s would hear her words. “We must go into the forest.”
Jeff rolled back toward her, still not opening his eyes. “You’re crazy,” he mumbled.
“Get up. I’ve been summoned into the woods!” she insisted in a hushed voice, shaking her husband’s shoulder even harder.
Now it was Jeff’s turn to sit up in the darkness of the bedroom.
“What are you saying, Mandy?” he grumbled, rubbing his eyes. “We can’t go into those woods. It’s the middle of the night! Besides, the forest is forbidden. You’ve known that ever since you could walk.”
“Yes, it has been forbidden all those years,” Amanda agreed. “But tonight, I’ve been summoned to cross into the forbidden.”
“What!” he exclaimed incredulously. “Who in the heck has bidden you?”
“The Bright One,” she said excitedly. “The Bright One invited me to come.” She paused and then added, “But there was a scary, dark one, too, who doesn’t want me to enter.”
“What are you talking about, Mandy?” her husband demanded as he reached for his glasses on the nightstand. “Just calm down a minute and relax. You had a bad dream. Soon, you’ll go back to sleep and everything will be normal in the morning.”
“That’s exactly what I’m afraid of,” Amanda said quietly as she tried to make out the features of her husband’s face in the darkness. “I’m afraid that everything will be back to normal in the morning.”
“You’re talking like normal is a bad thing,” Jeff said with a frown breaking over his face.
“Normal is not always good!” Amanda whispered loudly. “Our normal certainly hasn’t been good, Jeff! Our normal marriage is crap. It’s going to die if we don’t do something drastic.”
“What are you talking about?” Jeff inquired with an edge to his voice. He felt that his wife was accusing him of being the problem.
“I can’t tell you here,” she said. “Don’t you know we can’t talk here–outside the Forbidden Forest? Okay, yes,” Amanda admitted, “we can talk here but not about heart things. We babble about the finances and vacation plans and whether to buy the SUV or the convertible, or what we dislike about our parents. Blah, blah, blah.
“And you’re always working! You never spend any quality time with me. And, yes, I mean never.
“We never talk about anything . . . that really matters.”
Jeff just stared at her in the dark, shocked to hear his wife utter things he had never heard her say before. Not that he could disagree with her.
“Even the things I’m saying right now are coming out of my mouth only because the Bright Messenger summoned me into the Forbidden Forest,” Amanda explained. “And once we go into the forest, I know I’ll have more things to tell you that I can’t speak of here. We need to go now and lift the veil of darkness.”
“Lift the veil of darkness? Now you’re scaring me, Mandy!” Jeff exclaimed in a louder voice.
“I want you to come with me,” Amanda said resolutely. “I need you to come with me.”
Jeff could not miss the seriousness in his wife’s voice. In fact, he had never heard her so serious before. “Now? In the middle of the night?” he asked, beginning to soften.
“Yes, now,” Amanda replied as she took his hands in hers and stared into the dark caves that were his eyes.
His wife had not touched his hands like that in years. Jeff’s pulse quickened and he suddenly began to feel brave.
“You want me to–no, you need me to go into the forest with you, now, tonight.”
“Yes, because this is a summoning,” Amanda says excitedly. “It’s a wake up call, of sorts. Awakenings like this rarely if ever happen to a person–probably only once or twice in a whole lifetime!
“We can’t wait until tomorrow,” she said so earnestly that Jeff believed her in that moment. “Tomorrow everything will be back to normal and the way may be closed forever. It will be too late. Don’t you see?”
**
Amanda had never been more right about anything. Life is about wake up calls, and they rarely happen. If you ever sense one in your life, drop everything and listen to what it is saying. God speaks loudly through wake up calls and you don’t want to ignore them.
Amanda was also right that it is easy to live on a superficial level in this world. We settle into normal life and build houses and cabins there. So much of our conversations are limited to sports, hunting, TV series, recipes, golf swings, video games, the stock market, health supplements, politics, social media, ab strengthening, yoga and fitness workouts, gossip, shopping and even the weather.
Many of these topics might serve as bridges to intimacy, but if we don’t go past these to the heart, we will never know each other.
Amanda became convinced that she needed to wake up and not continue to sleep in the normalcy of life. She knew that remaining in the normal would lull her into settling for a lonely life–or at least an alone life. She had to enter the Forbidden Forest (FF) to save her marriage and her own heart.
Do you ever feel distant from those around you? Do you sense your marriage drifting apart year after year? Do you feel like you’re alone in the universe even though you physically rub elbows with people every day? Do you often wonder who you are?
These experiences often occur when we avoid going into the FF. They tell us that we need to escape from the gravity pull generated by normal life and blast off into the abundant life.
Jesus came to save you from the gravity of darkness that masquerades as normalcy and that seeks to kill your God-given purpose on this planet and in the life to come.
In the next post, BP17, I’ll explain what the Forbidden Forest is and discuss why we’re so hesitant to enter it. Most importantly, I’ll look at ways to blaze a trail through the dark woods because there’s something in the center of that forest that we simply can’t live without.
For now, know that humans are so easily deceived into embracing what is less and shunning what is more–that which will give us life beyond imagination.
And God spoke all these words, saying, I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. . . . In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again and take you to myself, that where I am you may also be ~ Exodus 20:1,2; John 14:2,3