#3: Best Laid Plans of Mice and Madisons
I love a good plan.
I’m great at going with the flow, but I like knowing where the flow is generally headed. Traveling really gives us a raw, introspective look of how we handle plans. When I first traveled to the Great Smoky Mountains, I had already done a few hiking trips with my friends. We had experienced that adrenaline-inducing way plans can go awry, when you find yourself trying to book a flight from within the airport.
This trip to the Smokies was the most flawless one we had from a traveling perspective.
But life usually doesn’t align in the ways we hope.
I was sick. And it was particularly frustrating because everything else about the trip was perfect to plan. So … of course I was sick.
It wasn’t a cold or flu kind of sick, it was a prolonged battle with chronic inflammation and immune problems. In my mind, I call it the Angry Red Monster. Because when it wakes up, it’s ugly and it’s tenancious and it’s just all around not a fun time. I won’t gross you with the details, but inflammation is a terrible burden on the body. I was itchy, in pain, my skin was blotchy and swollen and fighting off infections. And sweating makes it much worse.
I don’t know how you handle hiking, but when I hike, I sweat a lot.
There in the middle of the Great Smoky Mountains, I was surrounded by breath-taking beauty and experiencing completely unplanned pain. I was months into one of the most long-lasting stays of the Angry Red Monster. It wasn’t going away, and it would be another full year before it retreated. I didn’t know that at the time, but if I did, I definitely would’ve fought against going with that flow. Sometimes I think God blesses us by not revealing how long a battle will last.
We ended up on an unplanned hike. Going into the trip, we had a rough idea of some hikes we should do, but it was a generally relaxed approach to selecting the day’s hikes. With a ranger’s recommendation in hand, we decided to tackle a trail called Andrew’s Bald.
It was secluded and relaxing and it was utterly gorgeous.
It was an out-and-back, so you hike about two miles until you arrive at the bald, and then you head back the same way. The entire hike was along a ridge, so for four miles of hiking, you are eye-level with one of the most expansive range of mountains in the Eastern United States. They’re blue like you wouldn’t believe.
I had been having a hard time with the physical pain. But walking along that trail, saturated with the views and immersed in the scent of pine groves, I felt a different kind of pain. It was that inward groaning for redemption that Paul talks about. The Smoky Mountains are sublime, but that just made the pain even more acute.
It was a very real feeling of ‘this is not how things were meant to be.’
Andrew’s Bald felt like a distant echo of Eden. The trail broke through the pine groves and tumbled out into an opening that gave a near 360 view of the mountains. There was tall, soft grasses that rippled like waves, the sky felt close enough to touch. It was serene and peaceful in a way that even a high-resolution picture can’t come close to expressing.
We didn’t originally plan to hike there, but life rarely goes according to our plan. Looking back, I know that God placed me on that trail in a literal and metaphorical way. Coming home from that trip, I’d struggle with depression and sadness and I’d wrestle with beauty and longing. It’d lead me to write the first song of this album. At the time, I had no idea what was ahead.
All I knew was that I was on a path I hadn’t planned for.
I definitely wouldn’t have picked it.
But isn’t it good that Someone else orders our days?
The best is yet to come.
Madison Marlyn
8.13.2025
