The light above the lake

I've said several times that this is my favorite place on earth. It is, if you're tuning in late, Emerald Lake in the middle of Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado. The top is a picture of me taken at the shores of the lake, looking up at Hallet Peak. The second is just a better look at the lake, as it's tough to get all of it in one shot. Even though I've said several times it's my favorite place on earth, and day dreamed about it, marveled at it when I've been lucky enough to be there, talked endlessly about it, had my Groom's cake modeled after it at our wedding, I never really understood why it was my favorite. Never, until that is, Lindsay and I went a short while back.
We get up to the lake Sunday afternoon. Maybe morning, I don't know. This was the one place I had been looking forward to since the last time I sat there with my brothers the summer before. Aside from its majestic and over powering - yet tranquil - beauty, what was it that captured me the way nothing else (short of my wife) ever has? I mean, devil's advocate, it's a lake. Sure it's pretty, but what's the big deal? Fair question. And I didn't know the answer, until this day.
We're sitting there, thankfully quietly, and Lindsay catches me. "Are you crying?" After a "uh oh I've been caught" giggle, I muster up a, "Yup." "Why?" "I really don't know." And we turn back to look at the mountain that surrounds the lake. I was really trying to figure out the answer to her question, I wasn't just avoiding it to return to silence, I wanted to know why I had teared up, and why this place meant so much more to me than any other on the planet. And I swear it's going to sound like I'm making this up for dramatic affect, but I hear God speak to me, "This is your 'Shack'". YES! EXACTLY! That's it!
For those of you who haven't read it, it's a story about a man (Mackenzie) who's daughter is kidnapped, taken to an abandoned shack in the middle of absolute nowhere and killed. Years later, the father is invited back to that shack by God. After wrestling with the thought, he goes. Without spoiling the book, what follows is a weekend in spent with the Trinity, putting his (the father of the kidnapped girl) heart back together. Mackenzie is healed of his wounds the only possible way you can ever truly be healed. Head on. Go directly into that wound and heal it from the inside out. Don't just put a band aid on and hope it goes away, you have to get your "hands dirty". Again, at the risk of spoiling the book, Mackenzie is sent back home after a weekend at the shack a man with his whole heart back. He's healed. He's excited, he's happy, he's finally able to remember his pain without reliving it, spiraling him out of control. He is refreshed, metaphorically dipped into the waters of forgiveness and hope, and he has emerged stronger and full of more love to share than he ever thought he could. Mackenzie's shack, is my Emerald Lake.
The first time I sat at that lake I had been meeting with Steve Lynam for almost eight months. Christ had been making real progress at putting my heart back together after the wounds of growing up in a broken world, after loosing deeply beloved grandparents, best friends, mentors, bosses (both), heroes, coworkers all to timely and "untimely" deaths. I had just met Lindsay a week earlier. The light was just starting to creep back into my heart. For months, years, it was dark. But now, there were little cracks starting to form. Those cracks were becoming bigger, and more light was seeping in by the time I made it Emerald Lake in September 2006. I sat at this lake, surrounded by a beauty that can ONLY be the work of God. I felt so safe, so protected. "If God could make this...and He also created me?? His hand is responsible for me and this!?!" Yes!! One of the lessons of "The Shack" is He just asfond of me and just asproud of His creation of me as He is of places like Emerald Lake. Probably more so. "I'm awfully fond of him". It's my favorite line from the entire "Shack".
That was the first time that beam of light broke through to me. (2 years before I would read that book) That was the first time I believed it. Ask anyone that was around, after I came back home from that first time at the lake, I was refreshed. Renewed. Relaxed and happy. For the first time in a long, long, long time, completely happy. It is absolutely no coincidence that shortly there after Lindsay and I take off. And everything else that has gone on. And sitting back at this lake two years later, the light was shown to me (pun very intended) why this is my favorite place on earth. It's where the healing was completed. And I was sent back into my "normal" life with a new, whole, healthy heart. Who wouldn't want to revisit a place like that? Whatever it looks like to you.