To return to the keyboard after months away feels delicious. Clacking is comfort.
While the world seems to spin in turmoil, I’m reminded again of the practice of looking for and engaging with the ordinary.
Spring allergies have found me, hitching Kleenex to my pockets and in my purse. I’m sneezing and blowing and swiping all throughout the day.
On one quick afternoon walk, pushing to find fifteen minutes of solitude, I fought the warm winds bringing in a storm over the mountains. These same winds, though, brought me a gift.
As I turned a corner bracing for another firm blow, I noticed all of the scents of the blooming flowers pushing to greet me. Lilacs, irises, poppies, and hydrangeas are popping up through the ground to wave hello. In with the winds come the familiar scents of spring.
Sure, the smells of flowers are easy to dismiss.
But in these blustery days, I was tickled to remember, these blooms appear without much coaxing. They sit, waiting to be admired, or ignored, as we go about our days.
Why do we plant them?
Aesthetics, sure. And perhaps, the truth goes deeper. May we hope for return. Hope for fragrance. Hope for beauty to emerge, over and over again.
Here we are again. What will you allow to grace you this week?
“Colin Firth is in it” buzzed my phone. “And the woman who plays Mrs. Weasley is Mrs. Meadlock.”
On a friend’s recommendation, I watched the new TheSecret Garden expecting to be transported back to one of the VHS I once played on repeat.
As the scene opened with vibrant colors and enchanting jewel toned walls, I paused.
“I always confuse this story line with A Little Princess” I texted my friend.
Any time one returns to a Classic, we see the story with new eyes. Perhaps this year’s felt absence during the holidays influenced this viewing. I sank into the couch and watched Mary and Colin (not Firth, that’s the boy character’s name) struggle to connect with one another.
This time, rather than obnoxious playmates, I saw lonely children wander in echoing chambers, banging feet, and wailing to be seen.
Spoiler alert – both characters have lost their mothers. The boy is kept locked in a room as his grieving father does the best he can to keep his son safe. The girl craves attention, and with snobbery and fits, demands others to meet her needs. In their coping, one is told to stay indoors due to poor health. The other longs for connection, fresh air, to be seen.
As I’ve grieved, I’ve longed to been allowed both responses. I had one fit, the day of the funeral, and was promptly told to keep it together.
I’ve spent months in the echoing rooms, wailing, and wondering if anyone will come see.
And this year, I’ve desperately wanted to lock all those I love into dark rooms with heavy blankets and cups of tea.
“Sometimes I’m restrained,” says the boy. “Father says it’s best for me.”
If only I could restrain all of us. To keep us safe from harm.
Upon discovering Colin, Mary says, “You’re pale.”
I am too. From being indoors and trying to prevent pain.
As they attempt to understand each other, stories of love and letters lost help the young children literally support one another to standing. Their healing comes in fields of grass, surrounded by flowers, fresh air and more jewel tones. This space allows the light to come in. Mary’s passion and persistence for connection and what could be helps her use the key.
I wasn’t prepared for my grief gremlin to poke it’s head out when watching that movie. A trigger warning may have been nice.
Grief is ever present. A forever dance of wanting to protect the ones we love from further hurt, a nod to intense isolation, and a loud wail in an echoing room where no one comes to see. It’s also a nap in a garden. A swoosh on a swing. Learning to walk when told instead pain cripples beyond repair.
Shelby Forsythia sent me an email this week saying she shared a bonus feature with content from our podcast conversation back in December. Parts of our conversation now fill an “in the meantime” slot for Coming Back and when I clicked play in the email, the words caused my brain to pause.
She asked me what was beautiful on that day back in December. December! Wasn’t I staring at Christmas lights just yesterday? Three months ago it was dark and cold and we were wrapping up one year in anticipation of the next. I was trying to live and plan ahead while hoping to cut off the pulsing blood supply to my grief wound. March was looming and with it came the promise of big birthdays and hard anniversaries.
Taking action, I thought, could help me resist the need to stay burrowed under dirt and hurt.
Ruth Chou Simons, painter of beautiful words and the owner of GraceLaced, said earlier this week on her Instagram,
“I won’t regale you with all the reasons and circumstances, but this has been a long winter for me. You, too?
But suddenly, branches are brimming with flowering buds and green shoots break through the cold, hard earth. Turns out, Spring arrived while I was busy thinking I’d never make it through the winter.
In reality, despite the way it feels to our feeble minds, God has not been hibernating or taking time off in our winter season …
While we’re wondering if He’s still at work in the circumstances that feel so impossible, He has been holding all things together for the unfurling of His plan.
Friend: what if your winter is His wooing?”
Wooing.
A gentle pursuit rather than a braggy ‘check out what I can do for you.’ I’m imagining a God whose wooing persists through desperation. Who woos while accepting angry blows to the chest from my flailing fists. The wooing from a loving spirit invites rest, waiting, and hope. Wooing requires trust, intimacy, and vulnerability. And wooing requires a willing recipient of all that attention.
I’ve been praying while doubting the wooing for quite some time. Asking and failing to trust all the same.
March submerged me in a pile of small grief bubbles, triggers popping like soap suds as days rolled off the calendar, moving us closer to the three year anniversary. I noticed today, though, my gosh, the days have suddenly passed.
So much has shifted since December and that interview.
When I stop to listen and sit at the feet of God’s mountains, his foothills, his rustling bare trees I see all that God has done for me and my family in our dark winter season. I’ve been angry and weeping and moving and still he kept saying, “I’m here.”
It’s light out longer now. The sun dances through my kitchen window long passed 7 pm. The things we had been praying for for two years just burst themselves beautifully into our lives like brave tulips poking their little heads out of hibernation and into our garden plot. The same patch of dry dirt that has been waiting. The place where we plan to cultivate beautiful things in this new season ahead.
Wooing.
God’s still at it – whispering to please slow down – for it is time to till the dirt and the hurt into beautifully rich earth instead.
52 Beautiful Things 