Walkabout- Tracing the Songlines

"God? What are you doing?"

I am pretty sure that question has been bouncing around in my head now for the last few months. I had just never uttered it out loud. I did the other day. I leaned in on my sink and peered into my reflection and said it out loud. Silence. Then this,
"I am taking you on a walk about."

Clearly, not the answer I was expecting. A walkabout? What was that? I pulled from the far recesses of my mind. ( Yes, frightening) and remembered hearing something about this in a recent movie that I had watched.

A walk about.

A journey. A spiritual journey. Here's what the wikipedia said about it...


"Walkabout refers to a rite of passage where male Australian Aborigines would undergo a journey during adolescence and live in the wilderness for a period as long as six months. In this practice they would trace the paths, or "songlines", that their people's ceremonial ancestors took, and imitate, in a fashion, their heroic deeds. Merriam-Webster, however, defines the noun as a 1908 coinage that refers primarily to "a short period of wandering bush life engaged in by an Australian aborigine as an occasional interruption of regular work."


I won't soon forget the look on Rob's face the night I came home from an outing with some ladies from church. I had never seen him look like that before. Head bent over his bible. Guitar out. He looked up at me and I saw the tears.

"What?"

" Annie, God wants me to say something tomorrow. It's different from the message that I had planned. It is from God. I might loose my job."

Gulp.

"K..."

I didn't hear much of his message on that next day. My heart was thundering in my ears too much. What I remember was him saying was that he couldn't pretend anymore and that he was dry and wanted more. I remember him talking about getting honest with God and not playing church. I remember kneeling with him on the front pew and looking up for a moment to see all 250 people in the room on their knees. " God of this City" was playing. The air was thick with something. People were crying. Husbands and wives were on their knees praying. Our precious teens. One man lying on the floor and another embracing him.

For about a week things were amazing. People were talking about revival and getting honest. Honest about sin, honest about thier homes, honest about their desire to appear perfect.

Then, out of nowhere it happened. The first rumor. Where did it come from?

"Rob wants to take over the church. He's ambitious. He's too passionate. He is going to take over the church."

What?

The enemy. It has to be. It is. We went from being on our knees to being at each other's throats and in and instant everything was lost in a puff of smoke.

One thing led to another. And another and another. Things unraveled so fast that my head is still spinning. Meetings. Phone calls. Accusations. Betrayal. Slander. Gossip. Destruction. SIN.

Even a suicide at our front door step didn't get the attention of our people. No one would listen. No one would hear. More meetings. Confusion.

Rob and I would go to our church on Saturday evenings with our two precious girls and we would weep and we would cry out to God to cleanse and heal and break and unite.

God heard us. He answered. Not in the way that I expected.

I wanted to be in on it. I wanted God to show up. To show off. I wanted to witness the transforming work of His healing power and restoration.

We went away for a few weeks. Two of the weeks were planned. The third week was all God. Our car broke down in New York and we were faced with this time of dependency on others and a complete visual of what the Lord was asking us to do. Our landlord called and told us that he was selling our house. We asked God for clarity and He spoke. This time it was clear as day. Released.

" I order your steps."


Rob resigned on a Wednesday. There was peace in the midst of the unknown. There was laughter mingled in with our tears. To let go of a dream and to relinquish it is both a frightening task and a liberating one. I can't really explain it.

We obeyed God. It wasn't neat. It wasn't pretty. It was downright messy. But, we obeyed.

So, right now we are on a walk about with God. Tracing songlines of our ancestors. Taking a faith walk. Praying that we would be faithful in this new task of waiting and as we walk this unknown path that we would learn more of ourselves and more of our God and that we would come through it changed.

We are broken. We are not lost.

"For the Lord is a God of justice; blessed are those who wait for Him. He will surely be gracious to you at the sound of your cry. As soon as He hears it, He answers you. And though the Lord give you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, yet your Teacher will not hide himself anymore, but your eyes shall see your Teacher. And your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, ' This is the way, walk in it', when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left." Isaiah 30:18-21