Roller coasters have been around since the 1500s, but the first one, by most reports, in the US was built in the late 1800s. A roller coaster consists of a small set of cars, connected like a train, that ride over a track that consists of high peaks and low valleys. In some early ones, and possibly some today, it is the momentum of coming down the steep hill into the valley that partially propels the car up the next peak. Beyond that point, the cars must be pulled up to the peak by some mechanism.
In Mitch Albom’s book, The Five People you meet in Heaven, the main character dies as he is trying to rescue a little girl who is trapped on the tracks of a similar ride. He reaches for her hands, and just as he grasps them, he dies. (Spoiler alert!) His travels through the book progress, and in the end, he comes to learn that he did indeed save the little girl but the hands he grasped were, instead, those of the girl who came to take *him* to heaven. In keeping the one girl safe, another girl had kept him safe.
Just like most things in life, the peaks and valleys, and, indeed, the entire ride, are never quite what they seem to be. At the time of Michaels’ death, I was already in a valley that I thought couldn’t get much lower. In the year leading up to his death, I had already buried 12 people close to me, and my only sister had recently developed cancer. I had no idea how I could go on living…this was all just simply too much. It felt, truly, like the “valley of the shadow of death.”
As I drove to get my sister to take her to chemo and radiation, I blasted Michael’s music constantly. One day, “Will You Be There?” broke through the fog in my soul. The rest is history, and why I find myself here writing these devotions every week.
Real roller coaster rides are fun; not always so much this ride we call Life. On a real roller coaster ride, we know we are going up a peak again; in life, that never seems so certain. In the amusement park, we pay a small price for a ride; in life, sometimes the price seems too high.
On a roller coaster, we ride with people we may never see again. But in life, the people who come with us often become lifelong friends. Just as the cars on a roller coaster have to have help to be pulled up from the valleys to the peaks, and just as it is that by helping others we often help ourselves more, so it is with the rest of life. So I’ll take the peaks and valleys, as long as I can keep the friends who’ve blessed my ride.
Are you coming along for the ride? It’s the ride of a lifetime! Wheeeeee!!!
by Diana Foley
Copyright (c) 2011
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