Finding our Path

We recently had a blizzard.  Our cat was stuck inside for days, unhappy.  Finally, he braved the cold and ventured into the snow.  My husband let him out early in the morning.  When I woke up, I called for him, but he did not come to the door.  I feared the worst.  Perhaps he had been hit by an icicle, or was trapped in a snowbank.

Finally, I got the idea to go to my bedroom window and look for tracks in the snow.  I found them!  There were areas where it appeared that he was confused and couldn't decide where to go.  But his tracks continued, into the safety of a rhododendron bush.

We live in historic times, and many of us are scared and angry.   We don't know what path we are on, and where it will take us. In times like these, it helps me to think of somebody like George Washington and what he went through at Valley Forge.

The Revolutionary War looked lost in late 1777.  The British had re-taken Philadelphia.  Congress, having no faith in Washington, refused to fund his army.  Washington would not attack the British in Philadelphia, and he retreated with his army to Valley Forge; they stayed there for six months.  His men starved.  They had no medicine, no supplies.  Somehow, Washington and his troops survived, and prevailed.

It is easy to look at history and think "Oh, they knew that everything would work out in the end."  In fact, they didn't.  They set out on a path, with no end in sight, and persisted.  Just as we must do now.