The Ship and The Anchor

I know a ship who dropped its anchor quite a few years ago.  anchor all the way deep down into the bottom of the ocean floor.  The ship, representing the emotional life of someone, stopped progressing.  It just stayed put for a number of years.  And we know, when no forward progress is made, it is unlikely that we are actually holding steady, either.

Anyway... no forward progress... and then, slowly, one chain link at a time, the anchor started to be pulled up.  Slowly.  Slowly.  Ever so slowly until that ship started to be able to make some forward progress - even though its anchor was still draggin out behind it.  Obviously, the anchor impeded progress.  But that ship just kept on trying.

Until one glorious day when the ship realized it could get rid of that anchor.  The ship wasn't exactly sure how to go about it, but the awareness was born, "I can ditch this anchor!  I don't need it, not even a little bit!"  And so the ship kept moving forward as best it could with the anchor holding it back as much as it did.  But the ship didn't feel the drag nearly so much because along with trying to move forward, the ship was also puzzling out how to get rid of the anchor altogether.

And then it happened.

The ship realized that there was this person with it the whole time.  And this person was right there waiting to do the work necessary to release the ship from the anchor.  In fact, though the ship didn't quite understand how it could be, the work had already been done.  And the anchor that created an actual force in the ship's life was, but also was not.  As soon as the ship recognized that person for who and what He was, accepted the truths He represented and decided to dedicate itself (the ship) to that One, the anchor was no more.

Now the ship was FREE!  Not a storm on the horizon and a new and constant Friend with whom to enjoy the journey.

Does this mean life was peachy-keen for the rest of forever.  'Course not.  Oceans have storms.  But since that ship now devoted itself to the One True Friend, it would experience relatively safe passage through all of them.  That doesn't mean it would come out scott-free... it might even need repairs, but it'd all work out in the end.  And so long as the ship remained true, kept trying, and endured to the end, regardless of what the storms might do, there was a promise of eternal reward on the other side of the veil.