Category: Musings

The intensely bright sunshine, glancing off the sparkling emerald green water, made it almost impossible to see. The day was quite hot and humid, but the breeze fingering my hair was refreshing, even though I continued to sweat. I took a deep, shaky breath, closed my eyes, and tilted my face to the sky. The glare from the ever ruffling surf didn’t matter. I was deep inside my own head working on something, seeing only what was going on in my mind’s eye anyway. I do this a lot. I have a hard time staying out of my head, actually.

I’ve written stories and had conversations in my head all my life. Sometimes it’s a little difficult to determine when I’m with someone if I actually had that conversation with them or if it was one of my flights of fancy. I’ve rewritten the endings to books and movies countless times. I’ve had so much practice over the years I can be so deep inside my thoughts I won’t be aware of anything going on around me.

I’ve recently relocated from Michigan. I grew up there never liking the winters because of the cold, and not liking the summers much because of my hay fever as a child. Although I did have the unparalleled opportunity of living in Arizona for a few years a short while back. My last winter in Michigan seemed so long and brutal I was not-so-secretly hoping to be somewhere warm for the next season. And here I am. I think God got tired of my whining and said, ok ok – I’ll let you go to Florida.

He’s actually pretty good at putting up with my whiny attitude. He’s very patient with me while I learn to act like a grown-up.

Digging my pink painted toes deep into the warm sand, I experience once again that familiar twinge in the pit of my stomach. The sadness that won’t let me be. I can see his beloved face. I can feel him. His scent surrounds me, and the emptiness he left behind cripples me. How safe I had believed myself to be in his arms. I foolishly thought it would last forever. I shake my head, trying to dislodge the mental picture, but it insists on returning, along with the accompanying sorrow. And now here I sit on this beautiful beach of chamois-soft white sand with my chin on my knees and my arms around my legs and tears once more sliding down my cheeks, as I rock back and forth unable to contain my pain. Crying shamelessly on a beach most people refer to as Paradise. This grieving has to end sometime. It just has to. The empty aching follows me everywhere I go, and there are days I want to lie down and die just to make the hurting finally stop.

But I can’t lie down and die, because there is still work to be done. My job here isn’t finished yet.

“Suck it up, sweetie.” I speak these words out loud. “There’s lots of people hurting much more than you, so get over yourself and find someone to encourage.”

At that last voiced admonition, I’m on my feet and dusting myself off. I pick up my discarded flip flops, give them a good shake, and make my way back to my car, sinking a little into the sand with each footstep, leaving a visible trail of where I’ve been and where I’m going. I only live a mile or so from the beach, so it’s a short drive.

I look in my car’s rearview mirror, taking stock of my appearance, dry my eyes, now puffy and red from my weeping, put my sunglasses on, then give my head a good shake and force a smile at my reflection. Just breathe. One last nod of my head, and I’m heading back to my new home.

Those gentle and mesmerizing sounds of the emerald water swooshing in and then retreating, over and over, is always soothing to my spirit, and the constant low roaring helps to give me that feeling of solitude I so long for, so I come to the beach to sit for a while as often as I can. Or I walk slowly along the water’s edge with the white foam tickling my feet letting the sounds and the smells and the gently sinking sun whisper peace to my soul. I can feel myself healing down deep where it matters.

Back in Michigan my stress level had reached its limit and I hit the wall – physically and emotionally. I couldn’t eat for days and then didn’t want to eat. No desire. No cravings. At least for food. My desire and cravings were for him.

Love has a scent. It is rain in the air. It is wildflowers in the field. It is
life pushing through the dirt.

The crack and pungent burning of a close lightning strike.

A screaming gale-force wind hurtling freshly broken branches into
the maelstrom.

It is beautiful and gentle and rough by degrees with passion and wanting
and satisfying.

A complete relinquishing and total possession mutually given, mutually
accepted.

My happily ever after, so far, isn’t so happy or ever after. And my memories in turn comfort and haunt me all at the same time until I fear I will go mad.

However time, as the old saying goes, heals all wounds. And every day, as I spend time focusing on the good, slowly releasing the bad, I can feel myself growing stronger. I’ve been smiling more and crying less. I count that as progress.

Learning the lessons I need to learn and moving forward in anticipation of my next adventure.

And my happily ever after? Well, I don’t give up on dreams that easily.

God always seems to have something up His sleeve.

I originally penned this in January of 2014 when depression had come to hang around for awhile.

The squeaky snow, now drifted across the sidewalk, made my trek to the post office a bit more labor intensive than usual. Underneath the new snow, the ice-crusted layer broke with each step, further slowing my progress. It was another cold and gray January in Michigan.

The words to that classic Christmas carol – Good King Wenceslas – kept going through my head. Maybe it’s because I had just endured the worst Christmas in my memory.

Good King Wenceslas looked out
On the feast of Stephen
Where the snow lay round about
Deep and crisp and even.

Brightly shone the moon that night
Though the frost was cruel
When a poor man came in sight
Gathering winter fuel.

It wasn’t night, but it was pretty darn cold. I felt like that poor man, looking for anything to bring me a small measure of comfort. I refuse to drive my car a half mile to the post office, so come hell or high water, I was walking.

I had a couple of letters to mail. One to the Governor to plead my son’s case. And another to my son, attempting to deliver love and encouragement.

I’ve felt like a failure at both lately. Discouragement loves to reach out with its dark foggy fingers when you least expect it. Sucking your breath away, and replacing it with a stone – making it hard to breathe. Feeling yourself to be absolutely without resources and hope make each morning unwelcome.

I remember when I lived in Arizona – how I loved to be awakened by the sun! I placed my bed just so, and my blinds at the proper level for privacy, but still allowing the sunshine to kiss my face in the morning. I would get up early just to see the sun rise triumphantly over the mountains. I anticipated almost to bursting each morning as it came. How I loved it there.

Life takes us and abuses us and then throws us into the gutter sometimes.

Gutters are unpleasant places. Cold and wet and filthy with mud and dirt and the detritus of others. When it’s hard to breathe, though, we may just lay there for a while, trying to get our strength back. Or so we tell ourselves. We can become comfortable in our uncomfortableness.

When our hearts have become filled to the brim with hurt and disappointment and despair, we have no room left for light and love and laughter.

We sit in our own filth of depression and weep. We know we need to pick ourselves up and put a smile on our face. We know we need to let go of what we cannot fix. We know these things.

But grief is a hard taskmaster. Its chains are like hardened steel and all we feel is the pain they inflict whenever we move. So we try not to move. But they continue to squeeze our filled up hearts, as if an unseen tormentor was at work, and as the hurt and disappointment and despair spill over, a never-ending well of more keeps seeping in and we don’t know how to stop that well up.

So we stay where we are, restless in our pain, wondering how all the people passing us by don’t see us. How they can continue on their way as if we aren’t there. Our despair makes us mute. And our grief robs us of desire.

I have this mental picture in my head. It’s a picture of a small vessel being tossed around on a rough sea. The howling wind and the driving rain are relentless. My tiny boat is slowly filling with water and beginning to break apart. Terror is as palpable as the sting of the raindrops on my face. And Jesus is sleeping on a pillow.

And I go to him and shake him over and over begging him to wake up and help me. But he continues to sleep.

And then I hear some faint words being thrown about on the wind, and they come from Job long ago – “Though he slay me, yet will I trust him.”

And so here I sit in my proverbial ash heap, proverbially scraping my open sores with pieces of broken pottery as my tears mix with the rain, waiting for Jesus to hear me crying out to him to wake up.

*****

When our days and nights are dark and terrifying, and when it feels like nothing will ever change for the better, hang on because it will. Despair eventually runs its course and the sharp edges of grief soften.

Take courage, for the storm will abate, the sun will shine, and Jesus, through everything, will protect you from the worst of it while you wait. Your strength will grow and hope will once again spring forth and life will be good.

Trust me. I know. Life will always be difficult, because this is our training ground. Jesus hears us even when our hearts betray us by believing he is oblivious to our struggles. You have protection you can’t see and help outside the storm swirling around you working on your behalf.

It’s going to be alright. Hold fast to what you have.

The November temperature was dropping below freezing, with the sun now below the horizon and full dark fast approaching. And my ten year old son Jeremy and I had lost the blood trail.

We’d been following the spoor for the last half hour or so, but now it was too dark to see any more blood drops on the forest floor.

It was my first and only year bow hunting on our land in Michigan, because the deer I had hit with my arrow hadn’t dropped as expected, but had bolted through the trees and we couldn’t find him anywhere. I used the venison every winter to feed my family, but bow hunting was clearly not working for me. My shotgun was much more effective. My purpose in hunting wasn’t to injure and maim, but to kill instantly with minimal, if any, suffering.

We had about 25 acres of woods at the back of our property, with the front 30 acres or so tillable land. This past year it had been alfalfa, and the year before the field was full of row upon row of corn.

I’m not all that good navigating in the woods even though I love being in it. I can get turned around too easily, so after the buck ran off through the trees with my arrow still in him, I made my way back to the house and asked Jeremy if he’d like to help me track the deer I’d shot.

“Sure, mom, I’ll help you.” He donned his heavy coat, hat, scarf, gloves, and waterproof boots, then followed me out the door, up the two-track lane, and into the woods as the sun sank even lower in the sky and the colors, almost like blood, streaked across the horizon.

It was a noisy walk, because there wasn’t any snow on the ground yet, just dead and very crackly leaves alerting every critter around of our presence even though we did our best to be quiet.

When it was finally too dark to see, and time to head home to try again tomorrow, I looked up to the sky to get my bearings. I did a complete circle searching for a familiar tree line, and then my old friend fear gripped me and my heart began beating too hard in my chest. Panic was right there, and as I willed myself to calm down, I said to my son with a quaver in my voice, “I’m a little turned around, do you know exactly where we are?”

“Of course I do, mom!” my confident 10 year old said with a smile in his little-boy voice. “Here, take my hand and follow me, I’ll lead us home.”

So I did, and soon we were out of the woods, standing in the field, looking at the welcoming lights of home just down the lane.

I’ve had to overcome a lot of things over the years that used to terrify me. I’ll bet you have, too. One of my biggies, though, if you permit me to admit it, is allowing myself to be vulnerable to the hurts of others. It’s easier for me to give money, give things, and pray for someone, than to drive to their house, or call them on the phone, sit down face to face, eye to eye, voice to voice, and gaze on their private wounds and trace their scars.

Because, if you’re like me, you feel inadequate and uncomfortable in situations like that. There’s just too much emotion going on. I don’t know what to say or how to fix them. People and their problems are a messy business and it drains me dry emotionally. I absorb too much and feel too much and it scares me because then I’m not in control anymore.

When I start thinking thoughts like that, though, I remember this saying: God doesn’t call the equipped, He equips the called. And also what God said to the Apostle Paul – ‘my strength is made perfect in weakness.’

Our meager emotional resources are more than enough for God to use. Just as he fed five thousand hungry people with only five loaves of bread and two small fish, he can use you and me, especially when we feel inadequate.

Jeremy had no idea how much his small 10 year old child voice and mittened hand calmed his momma’s fears. He didn’t know a lot of things – he was just a little boy. But he knew how to get us back home.

People who are hurting are just looking for someone to show them the way home. The way out of their pain and back to the comforting lights just down the lane.