Pitfall

It feels a little too much like real life.

Pitfall.

The escape room.

The game where you are "locked" in a room with your closest friends or family, finding clues and cracking codes to "escape" within 60 minutes. Trying to keep cool, spend quality time with my daughter before she moves off to college in less than two weeks. What other fun can you have on the kind of day where you feel like you stepped into a sauna, but you didn’t want to. The sweat drips down my back faster than the ice cream drips down my hand. Let’s just say our options are limited.

So here we are.

In the escape room.

This was supposed to be fun, but I am getting frustrated.

This was supposed to be an adventure, but I am agitated.

Solving this mystery parallels real life. Too many puzzles to figure out. So much I can’t control. Daily life and routines are not normal. Getting appointments set up are not as seamless as they used to be. 

I forgot the goal of this escape room,

is not only to escape it.

It was to have fun. To be together. To experience life with one another and bond over these struggles. And laugh in the process. But dang it, I want to figure this out! I want to succeed and solve the mystery before the 60 minutes are up!

Locks with four numbers, locks with keys, symbols and hidden meanings everywhere. But how do they all fit together?

We crack a few codes. And then we get stuck.

The clue was staring me in the face, but I was not getting the meaning.

Neither was anyone else.

We stared at the symbols on the wall, agreed this was important, but how?

I stared at the image in the barrel with one symbol and a clock face of numbers. This, too, is critical.

Still stuck. 

The game master relays a hint. 

"Look at the symbols."

“We are. It’s not helping.” 

Repetition of the hint. 

Still not getting it. 

The hint arrives with a little more detail, “Look at the wall with those same symbols.” 

Still not clicking with us. The hint is repeated again. 

Nothing comes to mind - yet.

Then the game master poses the question in a way that makes all the difference, “If that symbol is pointing to that number, what numbers would the other symbols represent?"

Like Charlie Brown screaming to Lucy, “That’s it!” we finally figure out the meaning. Now we are on a roll. Funny how that one clue changes everything.  Getting through that piece of the puzzle enables us to move on to the next. We solve the mystery with 11 and a half minutes remaining!

It reminds me of how He tenderly repeats, when I know He is trying to encourage me to see and to live from a kingdom perspective. The perspective that is true. The one where I am living as one perfectly loved.

Don’t escape this room with Me.

The meaning is clear: don’t try to escape this place, this space of time, with Me. 

Stop rushing. 

Just be.

To pursue and engage your life actively in everything that celebrates your redeemed oneness . . . cultivate a righteousness-consciousness.  Become addicted to the adventures of faith; let the agape love of God romance you into his rest where you cease from striving and bask in completeness. Feast on peace, celebrate your joint togetherness with everyone who has mutually discovered their original identity in the Lord. Live your life from this place of innocence, from your heart.                                     2 Timothy 2:22 MIRROR Study Bible