Crossing the Too-High Bridge

 

I was little, and that old Huey P. Long bridge in New Orleans
might as well have been the edge of the world.
The lanes looked too skinny for the car we were in,
and my brothers and sisters… Lord, they knew exactly what to say,
would lean in with their cruelty like it was a game:
How high it was, how easy it would be to go over,
How you wouldn’t even have time to holler before you were gone.

I sat there holding my breath, trying to act tough,
But my body told the truth before my mouth ever could.
Sometimes I peed a little from pure fear.
Not a proud moment, but it’s honest.

And when a train was crossing at the same time,
metal and thunder rattling the whole thing,
It felt like the bridge was alive under us,
like it could shrug and sling us off to prove a point.

The worst never happened.
But it always seemed like it might.
Then I turned sixteen and got a driver’s license;
And wouldn’t you know it,
Life brought me right back to my nemesis.

The pastor invited me to ride with him to New Orleans.
I didn’t know what he and my mother had cooked up,
But I found out when he pulled over at the foot of that bridge,
calm as Sunday morning, stepped out, and said,
“You’re driving us across.”

My driving experience was a 1963 Rambler,
And here he was handing me the wheel
to his brand new Chrysler New Yorker,
all that shiny metal and power I didn’t feel ready to hold.

I remember my hands on the steering wheel,
the bridge rising up in front of me like a dare,
My stomach churning hot and hollow.
Raw fear again! Same fear, different seat.
But I did it.

He said I needed to face it.
Oh wow. Did I.
That’s how it’s gone, if I’m honest.
So many bridges after that one;
new jobs, hard conversations, losses I didn’t get to vote on,
doors I didn’t think I was qualified to walk through,
days when I felt the lane was too narrow
And the drop-off was too close.

But the lesson keeps coming back the same:
You don’t get brave first and then cross.
You cross it shaking.
You cross with your pride tucked away somewhere safe.
You cross because you have to and because God is kind.

Grace has met me at the foot of more than one bridge.
And every time I thought, “I can’t,”
Some strength I didn’t know I had surfaced,
and I found myself on the other side,
still here,
still held in His mighty hands.

wcd