It was like God had sent a savior! After all the worry and confusion, it was all okay! We found our way out. Who knew that in twenty brief minutes, you could get completely lost in the woods?

One Saturday morning, I was at cross country practice, as usual. It was one of the warmer days which meant that the season was coming to a close end. When I walked up to the island of grass, I met my best friend Maddie as I usually did. The team did our normal stretches, and we gathered for prayer.








“Run by my side, Lord…” we recited in unison.
Right after we prayed, our head coach gave us a warning.

“While you guys are running, you’ll notice there’s a tree in the way of the trail. There’s another trail…”

“Maddie, doesn’t he look so cute today!” I exclaimed.

“Oh, Eden, please!” Maddie joked.

“Sorry! I had to mention it,” I explained.
Should I be listening to her directions? Oh, whatever. It won’t be hard to find; it’s just a spare trail! While we were engaged in this conversation, we missed the entire warning.

“Ready? Go!” our coaches yelled. The entire team dashed forward, with Madeline and me trailing in the back. We were still talking and laughing as we were before. As we rounded the big patch of trees, we started entering the forest part of the trail. We decided to start walking because we were in the back of pack anyway; we were also laughing much too hard to be running and breathing normally.

All of a sudden, we started hearing branches shaking. “Did you hear that?”
I asked.

“Yeah…oh well, let’s keep going,” Maddie encouraged. Both of us were pretty freaked out, but that feeling passed soon. We just went on walking knowing that it was probably “just the wind”. When all seemed well, we suddenly stopped right in our tracks. A tree as large and tall as Paul Bunyan lay straight in the middle of our trail. I remembered our coach mentioning this. I looked at Madeline, and she looked at me. The look on her face told me that she had no better idea of where we were supposed to go than I did.

“Did we miss the makeshift trial?” I asked, trying not to panic.

“I don’t know. I didn’t see one…did you?” Madeline asked.

“No. What do we do? Should we go back?” I started to worry.

“I don’t know what to do. We can find it! I mean it’s a trail…how can we miss it?”
This trail must have been invisible. We saw no sign; we saw nothing. I should’ve listened! I thought. We searched and thought about going back, but we agreed it would take too long to go back.

“I’m scared! Those noises with the braches were probably some creepy guy who’s coming to get us!”

“Eden, I know! I’m scared too. I don’t know what to do!”
Snap! We heard a branch snap very close to us. Our heads shot up in surprise, wonder, and fear. I saw something moving just above the leaves of the tree.

“Hey girls…”

“Mr. M!” We yelled in unison. It was a miracle! The guardian angel we were in desperate need of had come.

“Oh! Eden, it’s right over here!” Maddie stood in front of a narrow path. It was a light brown dirt path, and it was barely visible…until now.

“Oh!” Maddie and I staggered onto the cluttered path. It was obviously just an alternate because it was not cleared. I rounded the slight turn of the path to see Mr. M, my teammate’s dad. He was standing in a deep blue sweatshirt waving us towards him.

“You saved us! Thank you!” I said joyfully relieved.

“Ha, you’re welcome. I came looking for you guys. I didn’t know where you were.”

“Oh okay, well thank you,” I replied.

“Yes, thank you!” Maddie added.
Madeline and I ran off on the obvious trail that lead from the small one we just stepped off of. We laughed at how silly we must have sounded before. Getting lost was really freaky, but we calmed down once we were found. Now, we always make sure we listen to directions!