Broken Roads Can Still Lead Home: Hope in the Dry Seasons

Just imagine something with me for a moment.

You’re a young child again, leaning against the wooden fence that surrounds your ever-so-familiar home. A gentle breeze plays with your hair, and you smile. Your eyes stare off at the gravelly path that winds around the dry brown hills and fades into the orange of the sunset.

And suddenly you feel this desire to take a few steps forward. The brittle leaves crunch beneath your feet as you walk, looking up at a sky streaked with wisps of cotton clouds.

Next thing you know, your footsteps turn to strides.

And you’re soaring above the path, leaving little puffs of dust in your wake. You’re racing past the blades of grass that shine golden in the light, and racing toward the blue mountaintops looming in the distance. You’re racing the wind itself, and all the world feels like it’s yours as you try to see just how far you can run.

But then you lose your footing, and you face-plant into the dirt. The metallic taste of blood punctures your mouth. You push yourself up from the ground, bruised and scraped and a little shaken. 

You see the sun hide behind the tallest peak, and a purple shadow falls upon the earth. The comfort of home, and all that is familiar, lies somewhere before this beaten path.

A path that you’re not sure you can travel back up.

I think we’ve all been there at some point. We’ve started something out with so much passion and excitement, only to find ourselves fallen on the dirt again.

And let me just say, those falls can wear on you. The pain, the exhaustion. It all wears on you.

Life can just get so… tiring. Sometimes it just feels like a repeat of the same struggle. It’s the same story all over again.

You force yourself back up. You get this glimmer of hope, and a few more running steps. Only to fall again.

When it isn’t your time

Every time I fall…

Every time I seem to hit the end of my road…

I can’t help but wonder if maybe this just isn’t my time. Maybe my time just hasn’t come yet. Maybe I’m still waiting for my chance to blossom.

My health has been confusing lately, and I may have a vitamin deficiency again. I’m not sure what’s happening there. All I hope is that these deficiencies aren’t a permanent part of my story.

I don’t want them to hold me back anymore.

And as I look back on what I’ve done during this track season, there are a lot of goals that I didn’t reach. But satisfying all the goals has never been my purpose. And letting that satisfaction become an obsession—That’s been holding me back more than anything.

I don’t know where you are right now, but maybe you can relate to these feelings. Do you ever feel like something, anything, is holding you back?

Getting so far ahead

To be honest, sometimes I forget that I’m only a freshman. Sometimes I forget that (God willing) I still have three more years to run my heart out in high school.

And I’ll pour so much effort into the winter preseason that, by the time spring actually starts—the season when I’m supposed to bloom—I’m all worn out.

I’m someone who has a tendency to get too far ahead of myself. I’ll push myself to my limits, and sometimes even past them. I’ll act carelessly, as if I’m trying to see just how far I can run before something else gets in my way.

And then I only find myself fallen on the dirt again.

But sometimes I’ll do everything “right.” I’ll take care of myself, set those boundaries, and give myself rest. I’ll have a plan and all the perfect conditions. I’m set for success, and yet I still fall.

And I forget that, in every fall, there lies an opportunity to get back up.

And in every fall lies an opportunity to assess where you’ve placed your hopes. Because if I’m being honest, it’s too often that I place my hopes in my own successes. Worldly successes that are just “chasing the wind.”

I don’t want the only constant in my life to lie in the things that are weighing me down.

And if I place my hopes in these empty goals, I’m always going to have something holding me back. I’m always going to find myself on the dirt again, and eventually, I won’t be able to force myself up anymore. I won’t be able to dust myself off, nurse those wounds, and carry on.

I’m just a broken soul traveling down a broken road with a lot of broken hopes.

I’m just a broken soul whose only hope is to turn to the One who can make beauty from the ashes.

And nothing can hold us back from seeking Him.

Trusting in His timing

So much of life involves these seasons of waiting. And as we wait for our time to blossom, we can’t let this spiritual dryness suck the life out of our roots.

“He is like a tree
    planted by streams of water
that yields its fruit in its season,
    and its leaf does not wither.”

~Psalm 1:3, ESV

This verse is describing someone whose hope and joy is in the Lord alone.

Fruit that ripens in its season. Leaves that never wither. That’s powerful imagery.

And it’s a promise to us.

It makes me realize how much more I should trust in the Lord’s timing. He’s the One Who knows the season when I’m meant to yield my fruit. And maybe that season isn’t right now.

And that’s okay.

I’m still His work in progress. I’m still growing my roots, and I’m still a weak little sapling.

But I’m still growing. Even in the dry seasons, I’m still growing.

We’re still growing.

And we have a hope to keep us going—and growing—in the dry seasons. It rests only in the One Who has made everything beautiful in its time (Eccl. 3:11).

Down the broken roads

The broken roads become a part of our story. But they’re not the only part.

And it’s easy to forget that. It’s easy to think that—whether we brought ourselves down this road or we just somehow got there—we’re stuck. Stuck in a broken place.

But broken roads can still lead home.

And doesn’t that change everything?

The broken roads are never something that we ask for, and yet they’re a part of the journey. They’re a part that changes you and helps you grow into the person you were meant to become—

Like a great oak that the Lord has planted for His own glory.

“He will give a crown of beauty for ashes,
a joyous blessing instead of mourning,
    festive praise instead of despair.
In their righteousness, they will be like great oaks
    that the Lord has planted for his own glory.”

~Isaiah 61:3, NLT

They’re a part of the journey home.

Beyond the broken road, beyond the dry season, lies a season in which we can truly blossom. God can take whatever roots you have and help them break through that dry surface.

Even when your faith feels uncertain, when you’re weak and broken and just stumbling through, trying to believe that a breakthrough will come eventually…

Maybe you’re still waiting for your season to bloom. I know this whole world—the creation itself—is waiting for the ultimate promise of restoration. It’s waiting to be “set free.”

“The sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. ¹⁹ For the creation waits with eager longing… in hope ²¹ that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. ²² For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. ²³ And not only the creation, but we ourselves… groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.”

~Romans 8:18-23

Recently I learned about this plant called fireweed. It’s a flower that’s the first life to grow after a forest fire rips through an area.

Burn it all away, and something beautiful can literally rise up from the ashes.

I don’t know about you, but… I think that’s pretty amazing.

And maybe fireweeds aren’t the only sign of restoration that we can see along these broken roads.

Heading home

Imagine standing alone on that dusty road as nightfall sweeps in, the cold air rushing through your body. Your legs ache and you don’t think you can take another step. Because another step only means more pain.

Maybe you don’t have to imagine—Maybe you already know what it’s like. I think we’ve all been down the broken roads before.

But imagine feeling the warmth of your Father’s arms as He carries you up the hill, around the bend.

The crickets hum faintly and the moon softly casts its silver reflection upon the path. Off in the distance you see the figure of a little house, resting at the foot of the mountain.

There’s a light on in the window.

And you can feel that light radiated in your heart. You belong there; you can just sense it. You ran down that road only to end up there all along.

Because that is home.

And right now, it may feel like a long way from home. But when you can see the warm light shining in the window as you stand under a dark sky—

But a dark sky filled with stars—

That hope will help you press on toward that finish line. Keep the faith, my reader.

We’re almost home.

And the broken roads can still lead there.

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