What Does Your Soul Long For?

She waves me over on the side of the road. The blonde lady, with a concerned face.

We slow, already late for school.

She points to a yearling, a buck, tangled in invisible wire, caught between the street and the land where cows welped a half-a-dozen calves, prior to summer.

I shift into park before walking with the woman over to the spot where back hooves are entangled and small antlers are mangled in wire.

Like a pile of thrown away carcass, the deer’s backside hung out, four hooves and a head, now wrought with antlers, caught in four by six inch slats.

And in that moment, I left the whirlwind of duty and worries, losses and a hurricane of a morning, that nearly brought me to my knees.

I was fully present, completely connnected to this being, looking at us clearly, with deer eyes, aching for someone to deliver him from his trap.

And I have been that…

The accumulation of everything I could see before my eyes.

Like a muddled message, placed in fur and bone, staring desperately into my eyes, at the mural of both our stories.

And yet, in that picture. In that loss and heartbreak…

In the broken state of not being able to move forward or back, I felt helpless, useless;

Realizing the power of deliverance wasn’t in any sudden fits of fury…

But slow, methodical movements that would untangle the web that was wrapped around his antlers and his hooves.

Deer; symbols of peace, gentleness and intuitive living. They are calm, even when pursued; graceful, even when being hunted.

And yet, the authority to run, jump, carry itself to the brush where protected; had been taken from this creature.

In the wide open it was exposed, robbed by bland wire, and caught in man’s snare, laid to keep barriers between creation and the danger.

And I wondered, was I that deer? 

Was I somehow derailed, caught, entangled in the webs of lies…

Created to leap over, but trapped by my own blindedness? Now wrapped, ensnared, unable to move freely?

And how many Christians have been entangled by distractions, caught off-guard by noises capturing us….

Losing our primal peace, because the world and man’s fences were hidden, unseen?

And us, in our journey’s, without even intending, have run right into danger, been paralized beyond belief.

Like that trapped deer. We can’t move and have no ability to free ourselves from the messes that have entangled us?

An older, well worn, wrinkled lady drove slow by in her large country truck. The two of us blonde women relished the glimpe of another who has gone before us…

Someone who knows the way…

Anyone who had lived the land, and experienced cutting free the fences that so easily entangled.

We step back.

She approached that fence with confidence and fearlessness. “We need a cutter”, she belts out without hesitation.

She steps towards her car, until we see the deer startled at the authority of a third woman. 

Miraculously, that buck then yanks his head out, runs back a few steps towards the street and then leaps large, straight for the fence again.

Why did he just not jump?

Instead of jumping, his head latches back inside that wire fence, stuck by his own horn, now grown only half a foot long.

He wrestled, and then used his hooves to push again and pulls his head out; only to get the back rear hoof hooked like before, once again stuck in that fence.

He lay there, dangling like a tied up trophy of the enemy…

Feet bunched together, body dangling, and head trapped in the wire, like a carcass someone found, but forgot to put out of his misery.

His eyes glanced back at me, while I whispered more encouragement, not knowing what else to do, “It’s going to be alright. Just relax.”

Over and over again, I soothed that deer with my words…

As if speaking to myself, trapped in my own spirit between the things my life represented and what my eyes were too dim to see.

I was him.

Graceful, peaceful, chosen, appointed. Given the authority of two horns of heaven, mounted upon me….Only to dash my head in the wire of my own inabilities, losses and regrets.

I pull; with overthinking, analytics, my own inner devotion, and the strength I think I can offer any given situation.

But the truth is…

None of us can pull our own heads from trouble; weighted with pressure, captured like a web, held by seemingly invisible barriers.

We are all lost and desperate for a Savior, someone outside of ourselves to step in and save us.

I moan inward like the deer, begging for help in situations we both find physically impossible to escape.

But then, the older lady and blonde woman step through the fence into the property of the fence builder. There, they push and pull…

Guarded because such a gentle creature could kick in his escape and drop them unintentionally, unconscious.

I tell my teenager, “Stand back” and keep talking to the male, as if his predicament echoed my own feelings…

As if we were standing spirit to spirit, separated, yet intertwined as one.

“It’s all going to be o.k. Just relax.”

The answers to true freedom never found in fits of anguish, lifeless helplessness.

The answer to this buck’s situation was to let the two women come around him, get near enough to pull the fence close, as his head shifted slowly from his own imprisonment.

And there, when his whole self relaxed, when the fence was completely opened, and the trees near the land had no other barriers…

The deer pulled his head tight, antler snapped white, and his four hooves became free before prancing across the pasture.

“He lost his antler.” I gasped, as I watched him leap away…

As if losing his antler was worse than being trapped in the fence.

Antlers represent superiority, authority, dignity, and power.

“He lost it”, I bend over, as if grieving my own dismemberment.

“It’s o.k. It’ll grow back.” My wise daughter reminded me.

But I imagined the other deer, mocking him in his defeat. His own nub, now bleeding, because of his foolishness, to catch himself helplessly in a wire that for some reason he couldn’t see.

And I think many of us as Christians can be like that deer during these difficult days…

Instead of leaping over human barriers, we defy our own God-given nature, and let the web of this life entrap and entangle us.

We can fight to free ourselves, but the fences of this world only captures us again. And despite our own good efforts, we need someone else to rescue us.

This morning, I bow my head low. I grieve at the loss of a beautiful, regal creature, robbed from what God had given him…

And I pray God would give us eyes to see.

That He may lead us by still waters. And that our souls, above all, might carry His peace.

“As the deer pants [longingly] for the water brooks, So my soul pants [longingly] for You, O God.” (Psalms 42:1 Amp)