The Road to Promise

The streams we crossed were swollen, churning and tinged a mottled mix of blue, green and muddy white—the dirt washing from hillsides, roadsides and riverbeds invading the liquid’s normal clarity. The mountains, which were perpetually ringed with clouds, seemed to tell the rain to sit and wait; “ripen a bit more before you spew forth,” they urged. The ravines, once plunging and steep, were shallower, and the jungle was less populated as we approached the coast. It wasn’t until we’d reached Bribri that we realized we were at the border with Panama where the Sixola River dissected the two countries. 

When we reached the official checkpoint, which was smack in the middle of the turnoff to Puerto Viejo, there were only a few buildings in sight, each marked with the seal of the Costa Rican government. A guard in fatigues stood in the middle of the road holding a machine gun and a red octagonal sign marked with Alto in white. He looked incredibly bored as he raised the sign to chin level, indicating Jim should stop. 

“Hello,” Jim said as the guard leaned down into the truck window.

“Hola,” he replied. “Americans?”

“Yes,” Jim answered. “I’m Jim and this is my wife.”

“Juan Baptisté,” he said.

“John the Baptist!” Jim exclaimed, smiling.

“Si,” he responded. “Habla Español?”

“No, sorry,” Jim replied. 

“Passe?” he asked, nodding toward the border with Panama.

“No, we’re just exploring,” Jim answered. 

He stood up and silently waved us back into Costa Rica past a handful of soldiers holding automatic weapons at the ready. I’d been holding my breath until the armed men faded from view, but nothing seemed to faze Jim. All he could talk about was how cool it was that the soldier’s name was John the Baptist. He believed it was another sign that he was on the right path. The pride in the fact that—after decades of struggling to build a business and put four boys through collage—he was able to do what he’d decided he’d wanted to do when he was attending vacation bible school as a little boy was evident in his satisfied tone as he told me how important these experiences were to him. Yet again, I found myself asking if I might have been able to admire his vision had I not been fumbling so magnificently with my own.

The devil-may-care part of me wanted to point out that he could just as easily have chosen to view the stop sign that the gun-toting John the Baptist was holding as a signal that it was time to go home and forget the mission field but I didn’t dare. Things were bad enough without me sticking a knife in the wound that was festering between us. The drive had helped to ease some of the tension, and since we were headed home within a few days, I decided it was best to leave it that way. Besides, the guard had me thinking about Jim’s stoic confidence and my total lack thereof. As we pulled into Limon, a verse from St. John was running through my mind: “And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.” Was I filled with so much darkness that the light couldn’t get in? I wondered. I didn’t feel that to be my truth but there must have been a reason I was struggling to accept the turn my life had taken in this confusing world, only to find so much darkness that no illumination could possibly pierce the void.

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