A cackle of laughter woke me and I jerked my head off my chemistry textbook in a burst of panic. How long had I slept? Did I finish the chapter? I wiped a thin layer of slobber off the book, then my mouth, and stood in the now dusky light of my bedroom to close the door on the happy chatter and chocolate chip cookie aroma wafting in from the kitchen. In typical Friday night fashion, my roommates were preparing for a movie party while I crammed for a test.
Smiling but stressed. Me during my college years.
The click of the switch as I turned off my light was comforting, as if I could somehow hide in the darkness. Let it shroud me from my fear, from the weight and worry of being continually behind. Not just on test scores but generally “not getting it.” Why hadn’t I majored in Education or something reasonable? Of course getting a degree in microbiology and clinical lab science was difficult, but I hadn’t anticipated how much my ADHD would multiply the challenge. How I could study for 16 hours a day and be perpetually behind was a mystery to me. My chest fluttered with tension, like a small bird working to break free from my lungs.
But I had an escape. A secret trap door.
Sanity lay at the top of a steep, one-mile trail in the Wasatch Mountains of my college town, Provo, Utah. Grabbing my jacket, I rushed through the kitchen, past my still-laughing roommates, and out the back door. I blasted up the rocky, desert path in a cathartic burst of burning calves and falling tears, leaving behind grueling exams followed by average grades and disappointed professors, their eyes a combination of confusion and pity. How could this intelligent, hard-working girl barely make average grades?
Calculating I had just enough time to get up and down the trail before darkness fell completely, I hurried my pace and sucked in a breath of air. The evening breeze whooshed away rigid edges of test questions, calculations, and equations. Free from stuffy classrooms with their yellow peeling paint, I plugged in earbuds and heard a sermon begin.
Sermons were music to me. Maybe because they offered hope. Hope I wouldn’t always be this way. Hope this sinking feeling of failure would one day be replaced with peace of mind, confidence, and the courage to come to terms with the confusion that buzzed through my thoughts like angry bees. My steps along the steep desert path became lighter as I let my mind explore doctrinal discourse instead of my present pain and frustration.
After just a few minutes of beloved peace, an awareness broke through my reverie. I wasn’t alone.
But after just a few minutes of beloved peace, an awareness broke through my reverie. I wasn’t alone. Two men walked toward me on the trail. One looked young and fit, like a student about my age, and the other older man walked with a tad more hobble than a bounce in his step.
Their hands were flying in an animated conversation and I thought I could get away with ignoring them altogether. But as we approached each other on the trail, the older man made eye contact with me and I knew he had something to say. He pointed at me, then toward the top of the trail, then back to me with raised eyebrows, as if to ask if I was headed to the top.
“Yes.” I nodded with a polite smile, “to the top,” and then continued walking without having to break much of a stride.
But the fraction of a second I had looked in his eyes revealed he was asking something besides how far up the trail I was headed. My conscience tugged at me as if I had turned away from a half-finished conversation. Turning around, I realized their vigorous hand motions were sign language and the older man was deaf.
A burst of regret bloomed in my chest and my feet slowed as I wished for those last few seconds back. Here was a person who took the risk to reach out of his silent world and I had barely given him a cursory nod.
The dirt they had stirred on the trail clung to the evening air, and as I pushed through it, I told God I was sad about what had just happened and asked how I could understand others better so I could be a more sensitive and helpful person.
I didn’t get an answer, so I turned off my sermon and slowly trudged along, asking again from a sincere place inside me that desperately wanted to know the answer.
In response, the wind blew.
This was the answer to my prayer.
Stopping in the middle of the trail, I turned my head and looked around, curious and a little scared, not sure what I expected to find. Wondering if this was some kind of joke but knowing it wasn’t. Never in my entire life had an answer come in this way.
It took me several seconds to wonder how the answer given was related to the question asked. How was the wind blowing the answer to better understanding people?
“How can I change so that I can be quicker to recognize what people need?” I asked once more.
And the wind blew again.
The setting sun had turned the dry desert grasses to a glow and the wind tossed them in a gentle ripple. The fact that this was my answer was so strange and I was so surprised that I stopped and stood, blinking into the desert breeze. “What?!” I whispered in a mixture of curiosity and frustration to God and the thin mountain air.
It was at this moment I had an overwhelming urge to turn around. Breath was stolen from my lungs as I did so. Filling the sky behind me was a brilliant desert sunset, streams of gold, pink and violet painted across the sky. Another answer.
But I didn’t speak “Wind” or “Sunset”. I needed a translation.
The crunch of my shoes against the gravel was suddenly loud as I took a few steps away from the trail, and lowered myself to sit on a large, flat rock.
Finally, I got up the nerve to ask another question, “I feel like you’re trying to tell me something, God. Thank you for your answer but I don’t understand.”
The answer came in an idea rather than words. An awareness. An awakening to the truth that I spent so much time in my own world, hyper-focusing on my goals, trials, and insecurities, that I missed seeing some of the most beautiful things around me: someone who might want to exchange a few words, a sunset going on behind my back, or just the beauty of the breeze rippling through the desert grass. The answer was in the moment.
22-year-old Kim at the top of the Y Mountain hike.
