I just uploaded my comments and MK made me laugh! She says she has been a faithful reader and wants the story now! I suppose the real reason I delayed yesterday was that it is a hard one to write.
As we walked through Phaselis, we stayed upon a path. We passed through the old town center. I simply can't describe to you how wonderfully refreshing and old Turkey seems! All the Earth was created in 7 days at the same time, but some places show their oldness more, I guess. We saw monuments dedicated to wrestlers from the 2nd century AD. We went into the theater, where we found "foot rests" on the rock pews. Amazing. This sweet girl, sometimes in another world, but almost always immersed in creative, intelligent thought when she's in that other world, found a pitcher plant. She was thrilled. We'd read about insect-eating plants, and she found it on her own and recognized it.
We came out of the town square and followed the path along the coast. There's just something I love about rocky, rugged coastlines with no tourists! We found this abandoned boat and the kids hopped on for a picture while I hummed the Gilligan's Island theme song.
Right after that, Twinkle Toes found a starfish! It was our first ever. We oohed and aahed over it and tried to decide whether to keep it or let it stay in the ocean, finally deciding it was not living anyway. Some of us stopped there to look at the starfish and seashells, and some found the end of the path, which appeared to dead end. The path did continue, but not along the coastline. It wound up to a cliff. The path was treacherous. CC and Uncle D and a few kids had already gone up. We followed later. It was almost comical. K and I were grabbing vines and relying on a skinny teenager to pull us up.
We got to the top, and this is what we found. It was one of the most beautiful sites I've ever seen. I took this panorama shot which does not do it justice.
Twinkle Toes and I stopped short of the dense brush and just took some pictures there. We started to hear some of the kids, making their way back through bushes, vines, overgrown woods. I could hear CC. I'd been wondering how he gotten Sweet Cheeks through all of that. So I called out, "Do you have Eva?" He said, "No, she didn't come with me." I wondered if she'd made her way back down with some of the kids, and I just hadn't seen her. She would certainly need help getting down, we all did. I called down to Firstborn. She could not hear me over the waves. I raised my voice over and over until one of my nieces heard me. She asked Firstborn. She confirmed Sweet Cheeks was not with her. Then I knew. We'd lost her.
The path that took me a very long time to go up took me no time to get down. I did not care if I rolled or fell or slid, I was not going to waste a second. As soon as I scaled back down the side of the cliff, I began to run. CC wisely stopped me and got me a phone, and I took off. Some of our teachers run 5K races and marathons in Istanbul. I would never resemble them, except for this day. I came upon an old man fishing. I asked about my little girl. He told me, in Turkish, "Yes, she was running up and down here like this...calling Mama, Mama." She was lost, she was looking for us. Meanwhile, another group including Uncle D, CC, and Twinkle Toes scaled back up that cliff to see if she had gotten lost up there. Aunt K prayed with the other kids. Twinkle Toes went back up that cliff like a mountain goat, I heard. The worst fear came, of course, right before peering over the edge of the cliff, Uncle D said. It's interesting, though, that a fear that she had been injured never crossed my mind. I know my daughter, and a risk-taker she is not. Unless something happened totally out of her control, she would not be there.
As I was running, a very real and deep peace washed over me. I really can't explain it. I kept thinking, "God knows exactly where she is. And I can trust Him." Then I began to tell Him that. After running back through the town center, I came to the exit, determining that I would lie in the street before I'd let anyone drive out of that park with her.
And then there she was, holding the hands of a little family of three. It was when she heard my desperate call of her name and saw my tears that she began to cry. She did not realize the severity of it until she saw me, I don't think. She explained that she didn't see us (we must have been around a turn on the path, looking at the starfish), thought we must have gone back the opposite way (since there was a visible dead end on the path), so she walked back along the coastline. When she didn't see us, she began to call for me, which is when the fisherman saw her. Then a family saw her. She (interestingly) spoke Turkish to them, asking for me. They were German, but spoke a little English. Sweet Cheeks took the hand of their little girl and walked back to the entrance to wait. I think part of my fear was that this is unfamiliar territory to all of us, I could not see long range as the path winds in places, and I had no idea how long she'd been missing.
But there she was. And God knew where she was all the time. I profusely thanked the family through my tears. The mom said, "It's ok, next time." I do pray that someone will bless her next time as she blessed me by staying with my little girl.
And as I've processed this over the days since then, I think there were some deep truths God wanted to show me. This path, life, can be dangerous. But to find the end of the path, life in Him, is glorious. The beauty at the top is almost indescribable. And still, the beauty is marred when we find it, but sometimes those we love are not there with us. We call to them, but sometimes the call to find them or even urge them to come can not be heard over the noise of other things. At times, others relay the message, then join the search. My run to find her was without any regard to the cost or pain to me. Is my run to find others and ask them to come always like that? Am I that desperate to find them and help bring them to this beautiful place they are missing? Sometimes those lost don't really even feel as lost as they really are. But at some point, once they are found, they will realize (in time) just how lost they were. I'm still realizing it.
And the other heart lesson I had that day was that God really is protecting our children, even when we either can't or have failed. I felt I failed her that day. Yes, there were circumstances that contributed, but I still feel I did. I kept thinking how absolutely awful it would be to lose a child and not have a hope in God who sees all. How can people live without hope?
And so, my baby was ok. I can't count how many times I hugged her that day and the days to come. It reveals what is really important in life. I assured her that I would have slept on that rocky ground overnight if I had to, if I had not yet found her.
And so Phaselis is a place where I have a little "heart monument" to God's faithfulness to my family. And I hope He changed me some that day and opened my eyes to more of Him.
