The Forest

The forest is never ending, the pit is always expanding. The sides are too steep to climb. The air is heavy with mist. The tree tops block out all sun, the ground is moist and heavy. The mist is chokingly thick; it reaches down your throat and pulls out the air. There is no escaping the forest. There is no coming back. The forest is always there, like a great, big blackness you carry with you.
At first you try to get out, you try to climb the sides, you grasp at anything that might hold your weight, that might hold you up. Nothing ever does. Nothing in the forest will hold your weight, nothing will help you escape, and when you’re in the forest, the forest is all there is. It presses down on you. It presses in on you. It presses you.
After a while the mist makes you drowsy. You stop resisting. You stop trying. You allow the forest to swallow you whole, because you know fighting is useless. You save your energy, knowing that the mist will slowly suck it out of you. Maybe you can buy yourself some time. You don’t know why you would want to though. You just want to get out of the forest, you just want to escape. Maybe buying time will make that possible. Or maybe buying time will just extend your stay there.
It always turns out to be the latter. There is no getting out of the forest. Once it has it’s hook in you, you will never be free again.
Time passes by, but you don’t feel it. You don’t feel anything, the mist swallows it all up, there is nothing left for you to feel. Nothing, except drowsiness. The mist is made of drowsiness and despair, it will take everything you have, and pay you with those. It has plenty to give out. It is like poisonous water. You need something to drink, you are desperate, so you’ll drink anything. Each sip will leave you wanting for more, thirsting for more despair. It´s a never ending circle. The more you drink, the drowsier you get. The drowsier you get, the less you notice how much you drink. At some point you don’t even notice yourself sliding down the side anymore. You don’t notice the mushy ground, you don’t notice the trees, you don’t feel the mist. All you have is despair, and for a while you will hang on to that, hang on to the only thing that seems real. But at some point you will want to escape that too. You long for nothing but nothingness. You long for darkness, for anything and anywhere where there is no pain, no despair. You long for it all to end.
You don’t hear the music. It mixes itself in with the mist, leaving you completely unaware of it. It whispers in your ear, you hear it with your lungs, it fills the air you breathe, and it takes over any self-control you might have had left.
It is beautiful. It is calming. The sweet, sweet tones embrace you, seduce you, tell you to come with them. Tell you they have peace, and they want to share it with you, they drain you for what little resistance you might have left, and they take over everything you are.
They promise freedom, they promise peace. No happiness and no pain, no joy and no sorrow. All you have ever known in the forest is happiness being replaced with pain, sorrow pushing the joy right out of you. It seems like a good deal. It seems like the perfect deal, and nothing could be better.
You take a step, and then another. A part of you remembers that you are supposed to fight, that you are supposed to want to get out of the forest. You just can’t remember how to want. How to want anything but nothing. The forest has swallowed everything you are, and a distant memory of a vague concept called ‘fighting’ almost looks comical. Why would you fight? You have been promised freedom, you have been promised peace. Why should you fight? Why should you try to remember what fighting means; what it is?
You go with the tunes, you listen to the melodies, cause it is all there is.

The forest closes you in, traps you.
The mist robs you of everything you are.
The music tells you how to get out.
You believe it.

When I was there, when the forest was swallowing me, when I was nothing, when I had no choice, I realized there was a voice in the forest. I could tell it didn’t belong there, I could tell it came from outside the forest. Outside the forest. There was still something outside the forest? The voice was soft and beautiful, and it sounded so pure. I didn’t hear it with my ears, I didn’t hear it with my lungs. I heard it with my heart.
Hold on.
That’s what it told me. Simply hold on. You don’t have to fight, you don’t have to remember how to fight, you don’t have to take a stand or save yourself. All you’ve got to do is not fall off, and I will carry you out of here.
And I looked around me. The forest floor was slowly disappearing beneath me, the mist no longer clouded my mind, and I could hear the music. It was no longer hidden, I could hear. And I could hear what it was telling me. I could hear the desperation in those tones as their victim flew away on a giant hand. And I smiled. I smiled for the first time in ages.
I knew that the hand had been there long before I noticed it, I knew the voice had called out to me thousands of times, but now I was being lifted out of the mist, and I could finally hear it.
It was a slow journey, but all I had to do was allow Him to carry me. All I had to do was sit still and not fall off. I got my strength back, my courage came long afterwards, but it came in the end. I even remember what the word ‘fight’ means.
This doesn’t mean it’s over though. God can take you out of the forest, but he won’t take the forest out of you. You will live with it all your life. It might fade a bit, it might not. You will sometimes feel like you are standing on the edge of a pit, the whole forest beneath you, nothing to stop your fall, and you are simply holding on to a branch, trying not to lose your footing. But this time you will recognize the music playing beneath you, this time the mist will have a harder time getting you to drink. This time you know. You know all you have to do is hold on. God will save you.
You will always be afraid of the forest, but that’s okay. Not fearing the forest would be stupid. But if you ever find yourself in or near the forest, you know: God will save you – all you have to do is let him. Doesn’t matter how many times the forest takes you hostage, how much the mist gets you to drink, or how far the music can get you to walk – you will get out. Not by your own strength, but by the strength of the Almighty.