Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own understanding; think about Him in all your ways, and He will guide you on the right path. 

Proverbs 3:5-6

There's a path back there, there really is.  It winds around the little peninsula and flows into quiet, tree-lined stream curling around the back of the lake.  It's almost impossible to see until your just on it.  At least three times I tried to find it, muttering to myself the patient instructions given again at the shore, and running aground yet again on the mudflats of one more wrong turn.  

At least a dozen times I've been through it now.  I still remember the shock of the first time I finally made the right series of turns and the trees suddenly opened up to reveal the wide slow stream.  Even now I still feel that tightening of apprehension as I paddle toward that wall of trees.  Did I take the wrong turn?  Am I really going to find it this time?  It just looks like its going to deadened up here.

Then suddenly there it is; peaceful and shady, another kayak or two, an occasional fisherman, the distant murmur walkers on the trail above.  The path is suddenly clear, the directions make sense.  How could it have ever been that hard?

There are so many walls in the trails of our lives, so many deceptive mudflats.  We stumble forward, rehearsing the directions, wondering how there could possibly be a path back there.  What joy in those moments, when at least for an instant, the tangled trail unwinds into a peaceful open stream.