Carrying Vision Without Witness

It was somewhere in the middle of the storm that I began to wish I had not embarked on the journey. I was chasing a vision, something that I knew deep in my bones was from God. Spiritually confused and unmoored, I watched everything go up in flames. It was not a quick burn. No. It was the slow, smoldering kind that eventually worked its way into a five-alarm fire that we could not escape.

Even in the smoldering, there were no exits. We were locked into a narrow way journey. The only way out was through.

It was the kind of journey where we were both unseen and ogled by voyeurs. Watched with interest, disdain, curiosity, and smacking lips. I hardly remember helpers, for they were scarce. Only vultures, abusers, and complicit bystanders.

With no life preserver, oxygen mask, or sandbar of safety, my heart shattered. We learned how quickly witnesses turn their backs or gossip behind whispering hands that the outspoken and bold are crazy and deserve their destruction.

My already fragile but longing trust in man was perhaps the first to burn. There were witnesses to trauma and demise. There were even one or two who seemed supportive, never realizing I caught the almost imperceptible roll of their eyes — an expression that belied their friendship — when I mourned and biblically framed hardship that made no sense. Yet even I could not blame them when I was just as tired of myself and the journey.

Even still, so much went unwitnessed.

There was the birthed vision for which helpers never came. Internal refinement, achingly purified through the burning, was used by others but not acknowledged. I emptied myself until there was nothing left to give…and yet I still gave. Because I could not allow the fire to be wasted. Nor was I willing to withhold aid from someone whom I could help.

Often the seasons of burning and isolation are filled with a repeated dying to self. It is the kind of journey where you finally see the light at the end of the tunnel, only to have a boulder suddenly fall and block the path.

Again.

There are few witnesses to the depths of this despair. To endure it in prolonged isolation is a kind of pain that only those who have experienced it understand. The fear that the valley is forever, that it cannot be redeemed and restored, and that you may be wasting your life on a vision that may never come to pass is relatable to all of us who have walked this path.

But the vision…the vision never relents. The moment you set it down in defeat, it demands you find something deep within yourself to keep trying. It coaxes and drags you forward when you want nothing more than to be free of it. Paradoxically, it also keeps you warm. A relentless vision from the Lord will test you. The bigger the vision, the greater the refining you may have to endure. Take heart. For suffering produces endurance. It produces character. And character produces hope (Romans 5:3-4). All are needed to successfully walk into, grow, and maintain the vision.

Carrying the vision without witness is not the end. Even though man may not witness as you need...though man may repeatedly fail and your heart simultaneously be crushed… You are not walking alone. The Holy Spirit is within you. He is your counselor as you continue forward one breath at a time. The Lord thy God, Yahweh, is that very breath.

His goodness is with you in the fire. His comfort is in the ashes. His redemption is in every moment that you get back up and try again. Every pivot. Every tear. Every decision to cling to Him. You shall see His goodness in the valley and carry it forth into the future.

I had fainted, unless I had believed to see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living.

Psalm 27:13 (KJV)