This morning I found myself walking the boardwalk at Lettuce Lake Park, one of those places I return to when I need to slow down enough to hear my own thoughts.
It’s become something of a Sabbath place for me.
John Denver was playing through my headphones, and as I stepped into the sunlight I heard the familiar lyric:
“Sun on my shoulders makes me happy…”
I smiled.
Then I looked down the boardwalk.
It stretched out in front of me with a clearly defined path, sturdy railings on both sides, and a destination somewhere ahead. Someone had already done the hard work. They studied the land, decided where the safest route would be, and built a way through it.
All I had to do was walk.
It struck me how different that is from life.
Wouldn’t it be nice if life came with a clearly marked path?
If every decision had obvious signs pointing us in the right direction.
If every destination was known before we ever took the first step.
If sturdy guardrails kept us from wandering too far off course.
And maybe, while we’re wishing, every day would be as beautiful as this one, with blue skies overhead and sunlight filtering through the trees.
But life doesn’t usually work that way.
Most of us spend our days making decisions with incomplete information.
We move toward destinations we can’t fully see.
Sometimes the path disappears altogether, and we wonder if we’re still headed in the right direction.
The older I get, the more I realize that while life may not offer visible guardrails, it does offer something else.
People.
Family we inherited.
Friends we gathered.
Neighbors.
Mentors.
Colleagues.
The community we intentionally build around ourselves.
They become the guardrails we cannot always see.
They remind us who we are when we’ve forgotten.
They gently nudge us back when we’ve drifted.
They steady us when the path beneath us feels uncertain.
They celebrate with us when the sun is on our shoulders, and they quietly walk beside us when the clouds move in.
The boardwalk eventually ended.
Life’s paths rarely do.
Tomorrow they’ll ask us to make another decision, take another step, trust again without seeing everything ahead.
Maybe that’s enough.
Not knowing every turn.
Not having every answer.
Just taking the next faithful step…surrounded by people who love us enough to walk beside us.
And every now and then, if we’re paying attention, feeling the sun on our shoulders and remembering that even uncertain journeys can still be beautiful.
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