When Beauty Broke Through

“Beauty will save the world”

Fyodor Dostoevsky

This is a story that didn’t begin so well. It begins with a family of 8 on a bus, weaving around narrow highways to reach the top of a mountain.

Don’t get me wrong. The views were fantastic, and it was the only way to get to the top of this mountain without paying an arm and a leg for a 5 minute cable car ride.

But I happened to be in the front of the bus with the little guy and the rest of my family was in back — growing ever more nauseous as the bus twisted and turned around the seemingly endless curving road.

Let’s just call it a necessary evil, shall we?

Finally, the bus stopped in what seemed to be the middle of nowhere — a few bombed-out buildings in the distance.

My family all looked at me — the girl who had planned this entire outing — with total bewilderment.

To be absolutely honest, I had my doubts, too — but I had to keep a stiff upper lip and pretend this was exactly how I had envisioned this trip going.

So I asked the bus driver how to get to the top of the mountain and he pointed to a narrow road and said “Straight up”.

The town we arrived at, Bosanka, had been destroyed by Serbian- Montenegran aggressors in their war with Yugoslavia in the 1990’s.

It was a sobering look at the devastation of war and innocent lives lost.

We continued our trek up the road.

The only problem was that we hadn’t brought our stroller (also my idea) and the road was really too narrow for it’s two-lane road status — every few minutes we had to grab littles and jump out of the way of the cars zooming past us.

I guess you could say it was a bit harrowing. To make matters worse, I could feel the disapproval of all my family members above the age of reason.

I had no choice but to fake positivity at this point.

The good news was that there were amazing views to keep us inspired as we jumped into bushes every few minutes, so as to avoid our death.

Finally, we made it to the top of Mt. Srd and walked to the large cross that had been erected by the people of Dubrovnik.

I felt like the worst was behind us, that is, until my 11 year old ripped the bottom of his foot on a bolt at the foot of the cross.

The people at the restaurant nearby kindly helped and even allowed us to push our reservation up an hour.

There we sat, surrounded by some of the most amazing views — but all we could see was the hefty price tag attached to each meal.

And did I mention I was the one who booked this restaurant? Whoops!

The bus wouldn’t return for at least an hour and everybody was starving– so we decided to bite the bullet and pay for this really expensive meal, in which everybody was in a bad mood and couldn’t possibly enjoy it.

To make matters worse, our little guy began to scream and fuss — so John walked away with him and didn’t return for half an hour.

Eventually, we realized we had only minutes to run back down that road and catch our bus, so I asked for the bill and got ready to find John and run like mad to make it.

There was just one teeny little problem: John hadn’t actually eaten his meal, and when he came back to an empty table, let’s just say that may have been the moment he lost the will to live.

Who could blame him?

At this point, we were all in a bad place. Darkness had descended like a shroud upon us.

There was no doubt that this was the worst moment of our entire trip. Everybody sensed it.

It felt as if there was no recovering this moment — and this, our last evening, in Croatia!

John and I had little time to decide: do we run like mad to the bus we would likely miss, spend a kajillion dollars to ride down the cable car or take the hiking trail back to Old Town Dubrovnik?

My vote was the trail.

I mean, it couldn’t be more dangerous than that road back to the bus and it was absolutely free! (big bonus for a family on a budget).

Understandably, John was not so keen on following another one of my suggestions — so far, I was batting zero.

A random guy jumping off of an ATV offered to call us an Uber. He took one look at the baby on my back and my poor choice of dress shoes and told us the rocky path would be a dangerous choice.

Frankly, most everybody was in support of the Uber, but darn it, I just felt like we were giving up if we took that Uber down the mountain.

But even more than that, I felt like there was something on that path for us.

I couldn’t explain it, but I said a prayer and made one more possibly disastrous suggestion, “let’s just take the trail”.

For some reason, against John’s better judgment, he decided “what the heck” — the day couldn’t possibly get any worse.

And that was the moment when beauty began to break through it all — all the doubt and darkness, and heck maybe even a little bit of despair thrown in for good measure.

There is a power in beauty. It has a way of breaking through the darkness in our life that is almost impossible to resist.

I say almost, because John and I did resist it, at first.

John will be the first to share that he didn’t want to give in to the indescribable beauty of that day — nope, he wanted to sit for a while longer in his anger and annoyance with me.

He will be the first to tell you that holding on to that grudge was a stumbling block to experiencing the beauty of that day.

For me, I was also dealing with a lack of forgiveness, too — partially of John for being so annoyed with my mistakes and partially of myself for my own glaring mistakes.

But maybe that simple little prayer I made before we decided to face the unknown path made all the difference.

Maybe it was the little doorway that Beauty needed to break through the darkness.

Because I can tell you that what began as a disaster of a day, ended in a completely unexpected encounter with Beauty — and it changed everything.

It’s hard to describe, except to say that God is Beauty, and sometimes in life, we encounter little glimpses of that Beauty and it reminds us that the troubles and sorrows of this life will all pass away one day.

It was one of those priceless moments when we could feel God reaching out to us through His beauty.

It was as if He had created this scenery for us and all the weary souls who would ever walk this path — to let them know that He was there with them.

I also discovered that this was no ordinary path. It was a pilgrim path — one that followed the Stations of the Cross.

It had been built by faith and was faithfully prayed on — despite wars and persecutions.

That day was almost a complete disaster, but walking that beautiful path — forged by faithful men and women I never knew — it was quite literally a pathway of grace for us.

I share this because so many of us are so unaware of how our simple faith can impact others.

So many of us don’t realize those simple acts of faith can impact the people around us in unimaginable ways!

If we stay close to Jesus, one day, we will understand all of it: all the good our lives brought to others and all the grace other’s lives have brought to us.

Perhaps more encouraging is one day, we will encounter a Beauty that so far surpasses any beauty of this world, that we would literally die, if God didn’t sustain us.

But God will sustain us, and He is sustaining us now through this life and leading us to that place of everlasting happiness and beauty and love in the next.

It’s going to be amazing!

So keep going and keep looking for those ways that God is trying to break through and change you, too.

Have a great Weekend!