Don’t Stop Believin’

There are times when we get to see the full circle of the year pulled tight around us. The firstborn’s annual dance recital is one of those times.

I remember leaving the downtown theater last year to find ash from the wildfires covering our car. Driving home that night we followed an enormous moon made blood-red by reflected smoke. I remembered the stories of a fire by night and a cloud by day, and I believed we were being led through the wilderness. I believed we would not wander forever.

But the days to follow were often a heavy burden. Stretched out before me, they looked like a desert landscape, dry and empty.

This year’s recital ushered in one more rainy day in a season of rain. It’s been pouring steadily for weeks. The retention ponds are overflowing. Streets have flooded, and I haven’t seen anything like this in the two years since we moved here.

It seems the drought is over.

In so many ways, it is over.

We’ve been handed a key, and we can spy an open door just a short way ahead. I can’t say exactly where it leads, but I also know exactly where it leads:

“For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land – a land with streams and pools of water, with springs flowing in the valleys and hills” (Deuteronomy 8:7).

My daughter has been working on her ballet for nine months, yet somehow I didn’t realize until this week’s dress rehearsal that the dance was performed to a symphony rendition of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’.”

I don’t usually find myself moved to tears by early 80s rock anthems (and, no, I don’t think I can blame the pregnancy hormones. Or, not entirely).

For two years I’ve heard only one word of instruction from the God I follow: believe.

That’s it. That’s the only thing that has been required of me (though even that one thing often felt impossible).

When “Don’t Stop Believin’” first came across the theater’s speakers, I wanted to put my head down and cry.

Not out of sadness or misery. But relief. Gratitude.

“These are the words of him who is holy and true, who holds the key of David. What he opens no one can shut, and what he shuts no one can open. I know your deeds. See, I have placed before you an open door that no one can shut. I know that you have little strength, yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name.”

Revelation 3: 7-8