The Steel Beast

I stood in the half barren lawn of the baseball field. A mix of gravel and grass flecked the ground beneath my feet, and I waited, a feeling mounting within me. 

The hollow WHOOOO of a train coming down the tracks awakened a feeling of expectancy in my soul. For years I had been fascinated with trains. It started when I was in middle school and I found out that people, yes, people in MY community, left it all to live a life on the run. Heavy metal and soot beneath their feet. Fleeing from one town to another, to live a life we all dream of. Or so I imagine. What’s not to be desired in being free? They busked at each town they stopped in, playing music and making friends with fellow tramps. But to me it was the feeling of freedom and open air that drew me.

There is something so powerful about trains, I thought as my hair whipped across my face at the old steam engine’s imminent arrival. I listened as it let out a loud whistle and began its pass in front of us. My family was in the field, playing softball and letting out loud WOOOPS as James hit one of the balls far out into the outfield.

But I stood quietly taking in the magnificent sight. The rods spun strongly around the wheels as the different carts full of cargo passed in front of me. 

To be free, I thought. 

My definition of freedom one day was this very thing. Riding in the back of a train car and not having anyone to answer to. My life could be what I made it. And the train would be my God. Strong, powerful, immovable. Fearsome, even. It could give and it could take away, as it had taken the life of one of the band members in a train-kid music group that I had enjoyed. As it had taken the leg of Chance, a friend I had met while at school.

I could understand the draw intrinsically. Trains could welcome you to a world that otherwise didn’t exist.

Just like God.

I stood there, letting the wind created by the steel beast move across my face, holding my baby and telling her what she was seeing. 

“Chooo-chooo!” I mimicked my mom’s voice, aware that kids need easy words to make sense of their world. And at the moment I had only words that I had heard my mom say.

I still believe I will ride trains one day. The desire is etched within me like the initials of a young couple on an old maple tree. That hasn’t left me, but my wish for it in this life has come to a close.

I have seen the other side, and it’s daunting, devastating even. I have seen the lies that pale in comparison to the reality of the True God. One that is much like a train in its make up and its splendor. But one stronger than them and greater than the temporary sense of freedom they bring. 

“Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness?” Romans 6:16

Many of the well-intentioned folks that have left it all to live this life of “freedom” find themselves becoming slaves to the substances and spirits that offer them the life they think they desire. Just as I thought I desired power in the supernatural world, leading me to become a slave to drugs and to a man that was hell-bent on my destruction. The man who introduced me to the satanic woman who ruined my life. I had a desire for the spirit realm but it wasn’t submitted to truth, just like the desire for freedom unsubmitted to God can end in more slavery.

”But where the Spirit of the Lord is there is freedom.” 2 Corinthians 3:17

It’s an offer, a promise that what you truly desire can be found in the Kingdom of God. Just like the world that you didn’t know exists when you dare to get on a train, so there is a world that exists that you can enter into if you dare to meet this God, that, you may like me detest at this present moment. A world you didn’t know existed, a realm that has only good intentions.

I met this world when I found Jesus. The one who created trains, who created the brains that invented them, and even created the spirits that often cling to the life of false freedom that is connected to the “train kid life”. I have come to the decision that I long for him more than I long for trains, and he is bigger, grander, and stronger than the steel beams that make up these awe-some vehicles. He is truer, and kinder, though fearsome as well. 

I believe he will fulfill the desire to ride in a train bed one day, but that day won't be on this earth, where I have to worry about the demons that would try to whisk me away as I am whisked away into a life of unprotected “adventure”.

Today I find joy in what I once considered to be hell. Hell enough for me to forsake eternal life. I enjoy time with my husband and my daughter and our pets. A reality I once believed to be God stealing from me. Stealing the spiritual power and false revelation I was receiving through drugs at the time. But God is no thief, and he isn’t a liar. 

There is a liar, and he does it well. He takes what is good and twists it in any way he can to make his destruction seem like just the thing we want. But the truth always points us back to Jesus. That’s the work of the Holy Spirit, a spirit above every other power and principality. And that’s my intention in this short post, that you’d be able to see that your desire for freedom, for the strength of the steel, for escape even. It all points back to Jesus. 

“Plans (motive, wise counsel) in the heart of a man is like water in a deep well, But a man of understanding draws it out.” Proverbs 20:5

Today I hope to be that man of understanding. 

I hope you can see what you are truly desiring.

Repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand. <3