It’s hot outside my window right now, with the sun pouring through the trees, painting off kilter patterns on the hardwood. But if you slide down the embankment by the wood shed into the old railroad cut and follow the trail straight back to the civil war era stones, the temperature drops a little.
Plus, it’s magic. A field of bluebells sloping down to the curve of the creek. A maze of deer trails criss-crossed with muddy paw prints. A crawling mess of vines, wild berries, and the occasional pop of a wayward cardinal.
I grow connected to places easily. These woods, perhaps more easily than most. A physical and metaphorical rooting in direct response to our forced relocation every 1-4 years. A defiant bloom of hope in direct contradiction to the knowledge that we will inevitably say goodbye.
On Goodbye and the Garden of Eden
Every goodbye is a grief and this is no exception, so I’m lingering over leaves and boughs and the sounds of a courting frog.
I’m tattooing every glint of sunshine off the water on the back of my eyelids. Images to carry me through a tidal wave of uncertainty in a new town and a new life. Again, and again, and again.
We were made for the Garden of Eden. We were made for whole relationships, for togetherness, for a Perfect Love. And goodbyes are broken, and hard. Another result of sin and death shattering what God designed to be whole. And I have permission to simultaneously grieve what is broken, while rejoicing in hope over what is to come, on earth, as it is in Heaven.
I will grieve these woods. I will mourn the trees bent low by the windows, the limbs bearing silent witness to our broken hallelujahs, and ultimately, to our healing.