Garden

I heard it yesterday.  And I really don't know anymore what it is I am hearing, except it seems to be the only thing that makes sense.  I do believe I'd heard these words before.  Two years ago now, before any of this.  Before this part of the story happened.

Actually.  Those words may be the cause of this part of the story.

So hearing them again, I am cringing.  Holding my breath, just a little bit, because maybe that will lessen the pain.  There's a motion to the making room.  Gestures, of sweeping and digging and a deep hollowing out.  If there is anything in my life, which has required courage out of me, it has been this.  This creating space.

The analogy of garden helps tremendously.  I forgot about this picture, until just now.  As I was re-reading this words.  These words I've dug up, from last time.  We might call these words, good intentions, or best laid plans.  You might even say I've failed miserably.  I might agree. 

But I've come to find, in the failure, something else entirely.  I don't even have a name for it, this something else.  But one thing I know, if nothing else, is the one way to defeat fear is to give it a face.  Give it a name, this fearful thing.  Dig your heels in and stare at its face until you memorize.  Until you see it for what it really is -- this shadow, pretending to be a monster.

When I wrote about situational awareness last time, I was in a very different place.  I had come to the end of a harvest season.  It was time to quit.  To lay down the hoe and the seeds and the wheel barrow.  I didn't know I'd never pick them back up. 

I had no way of knowing the discouragement, which would follow.  How empty I would feel, and how useless during a season of "rest".  I had intended to make room and as the water spilled out, I was terrified by the emptiness of it.  I remember spending a month of silence in the car, shortly thereafter.  No radio. 

Waiting to hear.  And never did.

It's been almost two years.

And now I have Judah. 

I never went back to that garden. 

I don't think I ever will. 

So the struggle remains, to find a new garden.  I let my little plot of earth rest, laid down my tools, with every intention of coming back.  But I was drawn away.  Others came behind me and made sense of the mess, brought a harvest from the soil I suppose.  Maybe I'd done the tilling, the seed planting, and was just not meant to reap the harvest. 

But maybe.  Maybe that's what I heard yesterday.  Maybe, when I heard "make room" He was telling me to clear some space.  To stop, where I am, and overhaul.  Clear the trees.  The brush.  And start digging again. 

My stomach hurts just thinking about it.  But maybe.  Maybe the process has begun already.  Maybe I've made more progress than I thought.  Maybe.  Maybe all this hard work, all this pain, this exhaustion... hasn't been wasted.