I strap on the yellow snowshoes given me by my love early in our marriage, because yellow always makes me smile.
But today, my face is stuck in fear, grief, despair.
Night is falling, and I trek down the woods path through 4 foot drifts, floating atop, falling occasionally. I'm on a quest to find the big cottonwood, the one it would take 4 grown men to wrap their arms around. Trees like this don't just happen in Wisconsin. This tree is sacred.
I have the vague idea that if I could just sit there a while, my back against the solidness of that trunk, there would be peace for a few moments. I think, too, about staying there in the dark. Wonder if it would be easy to just go to sleep in the cold. My brain catches the thoughts in it's sieve and I turn them over in my mind and reject them. No precious stones there. I thank God for the cottonwood tree, pray that He will help me stand up and walk home. Choose life once more.
Darkness falls quickly in the woods. But I am smiling now. My breath comes hard and fast, I take off my mittens because the work has warmed all the places I felt dead inside. I pace my breathing. I take a chunk of snow in my bare hand and push it against forehead, the cold bringing my soul rushing back inside,
ready for the walk home.
And as the sun sets, and the woods turn entirely to shadow, the snow gray instead of white, I emerge from the woods onto the road and home.
I have survived, walked through this temptation. I whisper words from the one Psalm that jumps like Living Water from the pages of an otherwise lifeless Bible:
Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me. Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will turn back to you. Save me from bloodguilt, O God, the God who saves me, and my tongue will sing of your righteousness. The sacrifice of God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart. O God, YOU will not despise. (Psalm 51:12-17 exc.)
4 comments:
Oh girl, I've so been here. More recently than I'd like to admit. I'm so glad you took that walk and found some strength. This is gorgeous, moving, and engaging. So many times I have prayed that prayer, for the restoration of the joy, because I can't find it or feel it anymore. It was a post just like this, written in October, that was a hand reaching through the darkness to pull me out and remind me that I'm not alone. I look up at the labels on this post, and I'm like, yeah, most of those describe me too, what I've been through, what I'm trudging through now. I'm sure you have plenty of friends right now who are reading this and lifting you up and wanting to support you. You don't know me, but I'm one of those already. I want to talk to you.
holding your hand, Genevieve. praying for your pain, and for the courage to know you are not despised by Him. or by us.
always glad to see you at IP.
Tammy, I have no way to get ahold of you, so I hope you get this reply. Please email at gmthul@yahoo.com so we can have that talk you wanted to have. Praying for you, my sister.
I have struggled with shades of this throughout my life. It is better now, but I definitely can relate to what you are expressing here. I don't know you but am praying for your inner eye to know the light that no darkness can extinguish...peace and love to you friend. You are not alone.
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