Darkness on the Mountain

when you aren't sure where the road leads

Darkness has descended on the mountain. A few minutes ago, rain was pouring down so intensely that I could only see a few feet ahead of me. Thankfully, it’s slowed to a drizzle, but the unfamiliar roads are soaked. I’ve turned off the radio, instructed my kids that I need silence—this is not the time to fight—and I’m gripping the steering wheel of my minivan so tightly I fear my hands will freeze in this position. 

“You can do this,” I whisper to myself as I follow the taillights of my husband’s CRV. We turn right at a road sign for Seven Devils, the small town where the mountain house we’ve rented for Thanksgiving is located. I know we are close, but I also know the hardest part of the drive is yet to come. The road snakes up the mountain, left, right, left again. I follow it cautiously, terrified that at any second my minivan will go skidding off the side of the mountain. Headlights flash and a box truck comes around a corner. It’s heading towards me, and I don’t believe there’s room for both of us. A flash of panic strikes as I imagine my minivan tumbling off the edge of the mountain, my children in the back. I come to a full stop, unsure what else to do. I hold my breath in terror, waiting for the inevitable crash. 

Somehow, the truck passes by without touching us. I slowly exhale and resume climbing up the road. 

When we reach a straight enough stretch that I feel like I can speak, I try to crack a joke. “They must call it Seven Devils because it’s a devil of a time getting up here, huh?” My four and seven-year-olds are oblivious to my terror (and my joke), but my ten-year-old is nervous, too. He laughs uncertainly, then asks, “We’re going to make it, right Mom?” I try to reassure both of us, then fall silent as I realize we’re turning onto an even more treacherous road. This one is wide enough for only one car, and if we meet anyone coming the other direction, one of us will be forced to back up—a task I do not feel capable of. I focus on the taillights ahead of me and pray, “Please let us make it please let us make it please let us make it.”

Finally, we pull into the gravel driveway of our rental house, and I unclench my hands from the steering wheel. My husband, mom, and sister unstretch themselves from their car, and I open the minivan doors. The two older kids tumble out while I unbuckle my four-year-old’s car seat. My husband fumbles with the door code, and I announce to everyone, “Well, I guess I’m living here from now on, because I am never, ever driving again.”

//

During the pandemic years, our family’s Sunday morning routine shifted from attending Sunday School and service almost without fail to lazy Sunday mornings with pancakes in our pajamas.  Trying to get small children (who were already spending way too much time on screens) to watch an online service was more energy than my husband and I had to spend. We started to feel more and more disconnected from our church, which was already reeling from a pre-pandemic schism. But we always assumed that when we felt good about where things were in the pandemic, we’d return. Right when we started seriously considering going back in person, an email landed in our inboxes. 

Our pastor was resigning.

Our small church had been stuck in an unfortunate series of what felt like one step forward, three steps back for several years. Between the pandemic and this new blow of our pastor resigning, it felt like we would be kicked all the way back to the starting line. We had poured a decade’s worth of time and energy into our church, but this constant feeling of defeat only added to the pain of wounds caused by that pre-pandemic schism. Both my husband and I felt a sense of dread about returning. 

Ostensibly, we were starting the search for a new church.

But the ways the pandemic brought out the worst in people, mingled with the still-healing wounds, left us both feeling cynical. We were unsure if we wanted to step foot in church again, and we were unsure what that meant for our faith. It wasn’t that we’d stopped believing in God. We just weren’t sure if church was the right place for us anymore.

//

“Jesus loves me, this I know,” wafted up to the front of my minivan. I’d just picked up my youngest child from his half-day church preschool. The church was on the top of my list of “maybe” churches—if we decided we were ready to go that route again—but other than a last-minute decision to attend their Easter service six months ago (were we turning into those Christmas and Easter Christians I’d always heard about?) we hadn’t made much headway in finding a new church.

His little voice continued, “For the Bible tells me so, little ones to him belong.” I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw his face, full of delight. 

When he finished singing, I asked, “Did you learn that in chapel?”

He nodded, clearly proud of himself, and I felt a pang of guilt. My oldest two children spent almost every Sunday of their lives in church until the pandemic turned our world upside down. My youngest was in the nursery for a year before the pandemic interrupted everything. I—the volunteer in charge of the children’s ministry at our previous church—had neglected to teach him even the most basic of things. I hadn’t sung Jesus Loves Me with him or read to him from the illustrated Children’s Bible like I had with my older two. In the survival years of the pandemic and my own crisis of faith, I hadn’t given him any kind of a faith foundation. I’d been so focused on my own feelings about church, I hadn’t given enough thought to what I was—or wasn’t—giving my kids.

//

We finish packing the cars, carrying suitcases across the gravel driveway of the Seven Devils mountain house we’ve rented. It’s a sunny, clear November morning, a few days after Thanksgiving. True to my word, I haven’t driven again since we made it up the mountain in the rainy dark. Instead, I’ve squeezed in the back of the minivan, riding down curvy roads sandwiched between a car seat and my constantly fidgeting ten-year-old. When the minivan isn’t full of suitcases, it can fit the seven of us on this trip, but it’s a tight squeeze. 

Today, though, I don’t have a choice. I have to drive down the mountain. 

My husband runs through the gears with me (something I realize I probably should have known long before), and offers to stay on the phone to guide me down the mountain. I nod with more confidence than I feel, give him a kiss, and pop in an AirPod. He climbs in his car, and I dial his number.

“You ready?” he asks. 

“Do I have a choice?” I say as I turn the key in the ignition. Though the conditions are as different as they can be from our rainy, nighttime arrival, I still feel fear coursing through my veins. 

Driving down this mountain is terrifying, but I have to do it. 

I ease the minivan into drive and follow my husband on the curvy, narrow road.

Artwork by my oldest child (painted at age ten); used with permission.

//

It’s the morning of Christmas Eve, which has fallen on a Sunday. My ten-year-old is acolyting for the first time at church—the same church where his little brother goes to preschool, the one that was at the top of my “to try” list of churches for months before we tried any churches. 

After my preschooler’s impromptu performance of Jesus Loves Me in the car, I knew we needed to stop talking about whether or not we were going to try any churches, and actually give one a shot. Starting the search for a new church felt terrifying, but I knew the longer we waited, the harder it would be. The church where he went to preschool seemed like as good of a place as any to start. 

But the scars left by our last church experience remain, so we’ve approached with caution. The church has met us where we’re at, and slowly, we’ve found our place. A few months ago, I, ready to commit, wanted to officially join the church. My husband felt hesitant about standing in front of the congregation. So one Sunday morning as the congregation streamed down the aisles toward the exit at the end of the service, we made our way to the front. With a few friendly faces present, we joined the church.

I feel less sure about many things related to my faith now than I did a decade or two ago, but I know I want to be part of this community of people who don't pretend to have all the answers. I’m learning the value of showing up, even when I feel unsure. 

My son walks down the aisle of the church, carefully holding the acolyte taper lit by the flame from the candle on the altar. I think back on our journey to this place, the twists and turns that took us from the church I thought we would stay at for years to come, the unexpected ways my faith has been shaken, the years of church and faith formation my kids missed out on. 

And yet, despite all of that—quietly, confidently, my son carries the light of Christ into the world. 

If this essay resonated with you, you might enjoy reading another essay about our faith journey, published in 2022 in Fathom Mag: The Tobacco Barns, Cathedrals, and Churches That Make Us.