I am a traveler. I’ve traversed the sharp mountaintops and shadowy valleys of life for decades, sometimes seeing the path clearly before me and other times stepping blindly into the unknown. My journey has been as ragged and torn as smooth, as painful as joyful. This is my journey – the journey of us all.
These are my mornings in this present place. I sit softly, breathe deep the mountain air, gaze out at the early light of dawn, focus on the now, this gift of another sunrise. Looking for strength to walk out into another day, I push away memories that fog the present and threaten to pull me back in time, away from here. It takes effort to bask in the present—His presence. My mind fights me, wants to run free, drawn to narratives of my past, reflect on hauntings brought to mind by the accuser.
I fight to hush them.
I sit quiet and focus on God’s mercy and unending forgiveness.
Morning hasn’t always started this way for me, back when purpose meant them, their small sun-kissed faces looking up at me expectantly, hours and days filled with the busyness of four little boys, a husband working in the shop a few yards away, a vegetable garden and fields and fields of strawberries and sunshine.
But now here alone, children grown, I have a morning routine. My solitary life seeks meaning, a reason to arise and walk across this wind-blown mountain one more day, hours not scripted by the moment but by quiet purpose. One more step, one more minute, one more hour toward forever. Or is it one less, the days before me fewer than the days behind? Gratitude fills my heart as I sit an ponder my blessings.
I look out across my travels and understand it’s because of purpose that I yearn to be there again in the garden with them, our eyes turned towards the orange sunset, the soft breeze lifting our hair, the joy so strong we couldn’t help but laugh. Back then days were filled with cooking, cleaning, planting, parenting, doing.
Memories. They have a way of weaving together our joys and sorrows into a unique tapestry—one that only we can fully understand. Our travels—our experiences—have taken each of us into worlds unknown through dangers, through trials, through unspeakable joys. How do we make meaning of such journeys? How do we glean joy from such unspeakable sorrows?
At times I wonder if the details of my journey are real or just images I’ve re-imagined over time. Pictures flash through my mind: his sweet baby face smeared in strawberry juice, small denim coveralls, cheeks flush with summer heat, their small hands racing toy cars in the garden dust at my feet as I hoe weeds. But there’s also the fear—me running from him into the dark night, his drowning, their unfathomable loss.
Perhaps we smooth and polish our memories over time to fit into the mold of what we want to believe about ourselves. I was a good mother. I was a good wife. I left and it changed our lives forever. All of us. Despite the storms, our lives went on down the road and we made new memories—children grown, grandchildren, new nests, new beginnings.
I sit here quietly in my rocker and listen to the moments tick silently away, inhale this sacred time alone with God, embrace this moment as the reel of vivid memories slowly dissipates and fades away to a vapor as my soul quiets. I yearn for His perfect peace. His presence. His promises new every day.
Warmth from the woodstove, cat napping close by, weary from her morning frolics, thoughts of rich coffee, Bible across my lap open to Psalms of joy and sorrow, forgiveness and second chances, of David and Bathsheba, Solomon and Absalom. Stories of hope from those who lived thousands of years past and now stand on the other side of time. Their wisdom calls out to me. “Listen to me,” they say. “Wisdom cries aloud outside; she raises her voice in the open squares. She cries out in the chief concourses” (Prov. 1:20-21). Listen.
I look out at the forest, tranquil in the cold morning air, branches glistening with the frost of late winter and by habit search for deer who common the grassy pastures alongside early spring fawns. Their wildness draws me to them and I long to touch one, to feel its fear, to hold a helpless fawn and protect it from life’s unforeseen tragedies.
I recall the day I found a fawn’s leg in my yard, dragged there by my black lab. I looked out across the forest hoping to find it waiting to be rescued, bleating for help. But of course it was gone, stolen from a doe familiar with danger and the risk of enemies who stalked her young in the darkness. I considered the brutality of nature and how my concern over this one lost fawn is miniature compared to my heavenly father’s concern for me when all those years ago I strayed deep into the forest alone. I ponder the fate of my own children and grandchildren and pray for their protection.
I feel one with God’s nature—His creation that continually awes me. Since a kid I’ve valued the security of place, nesting warm spaces, longing for home, keeping my children safe from harm.
As I bask in His presence, I begin to feel the foundation firm underneath my seeking soul, like concrete beginning to cure.
Outside the red Americana rooster welcomes the morning with his melodic crowing. “It’s morning,” he declares. The hens, who put up with his machismo must long for the peace of sunrise when he finally quiets. The crackle of the woodstove, like the ticking clock, commemorates the passing seconds that echo into oblivion.
Peace Farm. That’s what I named this ten-acre property on the fortieth birthday of my salvation when God gifted it to me. Forty years of knowing Him, sometimes from a distance, landed me here to begin a new chapter of my story. I bask in the beauty that binds me to this place while reaching out for more: meaning, hope, a need to make sense of this time, this place, this world in chaos. This human condition. Life for or all of humanity – not just me.
Why, Lord, I whisper?
Only in the arena of worship and gratitude do I even begin to understand my path—His purpose for my life—for any life. What does this all mean, I ask?
I thank God for memories, tastes of times past. Lesson-givers. A place for us to assign meaning, to weave together all life’s events and create our unique story. I look back and savor, holding close those precious memories: my sons’ first cries, their soft baby skin, tiny hands grasping, hoping. Their ability to live each moment to its fullness, honest with their devotions to seek love and acceptance. Their slow understanding of how the world works, of time and its shackles, of joys and peace, pain and sorrow that come with being human, strapped to an earthly enemy determined to make us pay for the wrongs of all who went before us. And our own wrongs, life-altering decisions we didn’t understand at the time would change everything.
It’s their pain strewn out across the years like shattered glass, piercing faith and slashing trust that haunts me. Unspeakable losses. Where is God? They cry out. They turn away. I fall to my knees at the foot of their despair. How quickly the enemy invades.
I refuse to sacrifice joy to my accuser. Through God’s forgiveness and mercy I have the power to decide where my heart resides. And I don’t even begin to understand life’s sorrow, but I do know it molds me, shapes me, creates new life in me something like a seed that dies first before springing forth with vigor. I hesitate to whisper gratitude for sorrow but if I cannot embrace it, an integral part of this earthly life, I have no hope of understanding a God who allows it to happen.
John Mark Comer, in his book, God has a name, puts my thoughts into focus:
In the aftermath of your sin, when the locusts have left and you’re standing in the wreckage of what used to be your life, you could find your hands full of seeds for a new crop, the soil under your toes dark and rich, and maybe even feel a drop of rain on your cheek …
This is what I’m talking about.
Mold me, Lord. Change me. With the fires of trials, shape my being into an image different, refined, rich with gratitude defined by both my sorrows and joys. Here, in this place where you’ve led me, along this crooked journey where at times you stood afar, arms stretched out, waiting. I wait here now, this morning, for You.
I look out the window and see faint light through tree limbs and know His faithfulness, His promises reminding me that this beauty is but a taste of what’s to come beyond mortality. I linger on that thought, close my eyes and rest in the moments that peacefully slip away, never to be retrieved – uneventful but lovely, like one of the million grains of sands on the shores of my life washed into abyss but remembered by a God who loves me unconditionally.
And He speaks into my heart. Don’t be caught up in the tangible. What does it really matter that you leave your loved ones the maple table, the antique glass, the photo albums, the land? Things that expire with time. Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not corrupt. Only the unseen, the invisible, the timeless pieces of self that are given away, freely and lovingly sacrificed, live on. Seeds of love, planted across time like spring rains.
My thoughts trace back even farther, before them, before I began to understand that this physical existence, this vapor that binds me to time for a moment, hinges on eternity.
This is how I remember my parents. Not in the walnut-framed mirror they received as a wedding gift that now hangs on my wall or their silly love letters stored in my closet box, but in those moments – those profound moments of undeniable love they gifted me. Their selfless sacrifices, even in the smallest heartfelt gifts that I knew they couldn’t afford, to their seldom tender touch. I didn’t see these things for a long time—years actually—because I strove to look at what they didn’t give me, to blame them for the consequences of my poor decisions, their neglectful parenting. I refused to embrace my own responsibility.
But now after all these years their love whispers to me, because in absence and over time love often blossoms. I had vowed never to parent like them, hiding love in secret places, never spoken, veiled in slips of time that I ponder now, but even more then. A mother at 17, I wonder if I succeeded. I fear I didn’t. I imagine my parents must have felt the same love for me that I feel for my own—so I seek, dig, retrieve brief times buried for years—and ponder them, replay them over and over in my mind. Behind each physical gift I see their heart, a striving to communicate in their own unique ways their love. A dress lovingly sewn—I know I complained that the hem was too long—a statue of a rearing horse with wispy mane, a tiny ceramic tea set, a wiggly puppy, a home, a hand briefly reaching out to calm fears, a black Bible bought with green stamps, my name in gold letters stamped on the front—the most life-altering gift of all. A ride to town through snow and blizzard to appease my need to see friends even though he was tired after a long day’s work, sick with diabetes and weary from his own journey that ended too young. The Appaloosa horse he bought me, paid for with overtime work (was I impatient with his weariness at the end of the day?). Her maple bars and fried bread smothered in butter, house clean and warm, clothes folded and mended. Her body scarred from spina bifida, crippling silent pain, teaching Bible stories to neighborhood kids. Her years of physical pain masked in quiet smiles and bowls of vegetable stew, too soon in a nursing home, in a wheelchair, bound to earth by her fierce determination to show love to us in hand-written scribbly notes, a bookmark, walls covered with photos to remind her—of us. Angels hanging from her ceiling, decorating her windowsill and now mine because she’s gone. They’re gone. Behind each gift they gave me is the truth about their love.
Joy is not a mask or façade for the world to view. Joy is a deep abiding peace that rests in knowing a God who works all things together for good for those who love Him.
I crave the day I see my parents again, whole and new and fresh in heaven when mortality is sloughed off and we have eternity to bask in joy. That is something beautiful. Something worth living for. Something that nurtures joy. God speaks through the silence of the morning and gives me reason to walk into another day, into the beauty He gifted me, to learn the life lessons he has planned throughout my days on this peaceful mountain.