The Bolt and the Coils
Rock of Remembrance
Late January, 2003.
Just arrived in Arusha from New Zealand after a long, miserable flight sitting next to my wife. She’d walked out just over a year earlier and I’d precious little knowledge of what she’d been doing since, or who she’d been doing it with.
She insisted on returning to Tanzania, but I’d refused to take her back out to the farm. I dropped her in town instead.
Why?
Because she wanted to return as though nothing had happened. And what had happened? Well, she’d run out of money. And her new friends soon after that. She also had to keep her family believing she was behaving herself.
We had years of major issues. We needed real help before even thinking about living together again. But those sort of changes weren’t agreeable to her.
So there I was.
Jet-lagged.
Wrung out.
Homesick for the first time in all my years in Tanzania.
And not feeling like I could trust myself to make wise decisions.
When leaving six weeks earlier I’d left the bolt of the company .375H&H Magnum (elephant scarer) at my boss’s place. Now I had to decide whether I’d take it back to Namuai.
I didn’t want my boss to worry about me so once he’d gone to work the next morning, I gave his wife the bolt, asked if she’d keep it somewhere safe for a month or two.
Like I’d guessed, she didn’t know what it was. But she musta smelt something as she kept bugging me to tell her what it was. I was being rather too avoidant.
The penny dropped.
“Oh no Andrew… are you okay?”
I stopped pretending. Told her the truth.
Being a woman of action she didn’t hesitate.
Immediately on the phone, booked me in for a 2pm slot with the mental health nurse. Then wouldn’t let me leave until I promised I’d go.
So I went.
I sat in front of an older Irish nun and told her the truth. She said it back to me and it was a bit of a shock hearing how bad things had really got being spoken directly back to me. We made a simple plan for what to do before my next appointment in a week.
I got back before four o’clock absolutely whacked, so lay down for a nap in the guest room.
Then it happened.
Not a dream.
An open vision.
I was awake, eyes open, seeing myself wrapped up in the coils of a giant serpent. Python-like. Massive. It had me tight and as I looked up I saw right into it’s giant open jaws which were turning down towards my head preparing to swallow me alive.
I was done for.
Suddenly I was watching the drama from outside of myself. I noticed other people present with more arriving.
They were tying ropes on the snake and pulling with everything they had.
Unwinding it.
Peeling the coils back off me so I could breath at last, and not be devoured whole.
My boss and his wife. The Irish nun. My family and friends back home. I knew they were present through their prayers.
The vision faded.
I wasn’t alone.
There was a battle going on for my life, and God was already bringing people into it. Some through prayer. Some through practical care. Some refusing to let me hide how bad things truly were.
God gave me a metaphor.
A giant snake.
Its coils.
The danger I was in.
The people He was using to save me.
It didn’t fix everything overnight.
But it marked my downward descent changing into an upward trajectory.
The lowest point of my life became one of the clearest.
I wasn’t abandoned.
The devil crushing me was not going to kill me.
Because of God with me.